Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jack reached for another piece of fudge and felt only the cold ceramic of the plate. He looked over. All of his fudge was gone? Hadn’t the plate been full when he’d brought it down to the lab just half an hour … He glanced up at the clock. Two fifty-three in the morning. Oh, he thought. He’d been tinkering with the new Fenton Wail Flail and snacking on fudge for almost four hours.

He’d forgotten that Jazz and Danny weren’t going to come down and say goodnight before they went to bed, signaling him to do likewise. They were off in Chicago to see a public lecture by the psychology professor that Jazz hoped to do research with when she started college in a few months. She’d convinced Danny to tag along with a promise to stay overnight and see the new exhibit at Adler Planetarium the next day, and she’d made it clear to her parents that she wanted only Danny tagging along with her for this first encounter with her prospective future mentor, which had stung Jack a little, but it was good for those two to have quality one-on-one time before Jazz moved out. They’d grown so close these past few years, and maybe the trip would get Danny to think more about college himself.

Jack wiped his fudge-holding hand on a cleaning rag and pulled out his lab notes on the Wail Flail to record tonight’s modifications. The idea of the device was to emit a tone that, when the flail’s head came in contact with a ghost, could vibrate the ghost at a resonant frequency and temporarily disrupt its ghostly abilities, thereby making it —

CRASH!

Jack spun his chair around quickly enough to see Phantom’s hand crumpled awkwardly against the rattling door of one of the Fenton chemical cabinets. It looked like the ghost had tried to reach into the cabinet with a hand that was suddenly no longer intangible.

“Hey, it doesn’t even need contact!” Jack congratulated himself with a grin. The Wail Flail was a good fifteen feet from the ghost and had still succeeded in shorting out Phantom’s powers.

Another crash sounded as some new container that had been unbalanced by the shove to the cabinet tipped over. Phantom jumped back out of a clear healthy respect for whatever chemical reactions might now be taking place among the spillage. There shouldn’t be anything too volatile going on, as chemicals that would react violently with each other were stored in separate cabinets, but an unexpected explosion would hardly be a first for this lab.

“Sneaking in to steal more of our tech, eh, spook?” said Jack, unholstering the ecto-blaster at his hip. The ghost had been stealing from them for almost two years, somehow bypassing all of Fentonwork’s protections against ghost incursions to snatch up new tech as soon as the inventors set it down, but this was the first time Jack or Maddie had actually spotted him doing it.

Phantom blinked as if surprised that he was visible. Man, Jack thought, this Wail Flail is going to be a game-changer.

Jack leveled his ecto-blaster, if not directly at the thieving ghost, at least in his general vicinity. “I’ve caught ya red-handed.”

“Green-handed,” Phantom corrected, holding up his ectoplasm-smudged gloves and grinning a bit more weakly than usual.

“Ha!” That was a good one. Jack would have to remember it.

“Well, I didn’t mean to crash your party,” Phantom went on. He looked … fainter than he usually did, dimmer, aside from the unusually bright ring of his suit collar. Jack squinted. Actually, was that just the ghost’s suit collar, or was there something on his neck? “So I guess I’ll take off!” He lifted off the ground and got about halfway to the ceiling before crashing suddenly back to the floor. “What, no more flight, either?” he muttered.

Phantom flickered for a moment — not his usual blink out of visibility but rather fuzzing into a blur before snapping mostly into focus again, now dripping ectoplasm — and a chill ran down Jack’s spine. He’d seen that before, more than a year ago, with a blob ghost that they’d held as a test subject for too long without letting it recharge in the Ghost Zone. The condensed ectoplasm of its core had eventually weakened to the point that the core had lost its structural integrity, and a few moments after the ghost dissolved, the remaining spectral energy had given up on trying to recondense around the absent core and had blown up a quarter of the lab. “Like a tiny supernova,” Danny had said, pale, when he’d been told what had happened. And that had been a little class-one ghost, not a class-seven like the ghost now kneeling on the Fenton lab floor.

“Don’t destabilize,” Jack nervously advised Phantom.

“Yeah, trying not to,” Phantom mumbled back.

Jack hastily disconnected the power source of the Wail Flail, but that didn’t seem to have any effect. He got up and walked over to the ghost, leaving his ecto-blaster on the table. As far as one-on-one interactions went, there wasn’t much to fear from Phantom. Jack and Maddie had figured out last year that the ghost’s driving obsession was heroism, which, while still dangerous in that it remained unknown just how much of a hand Phantom had in causing the various disasters that provided him opportunities for heroics, at least meant that Phantom wouldn’t let people in his vicinity come to harm if he could help it.

Phantom didn’t look up as Jack knelt in front of him. “What’s that on your neck?” Jack asked with a nod towards the glowing collar. It seemed to brighten by the moment while Phantom dimmed.

“Gift from the Guys in White,” the ghost explained, his voice faint enough that it took Jack a moment to make out his words through the ever-present echo effect in ghosts’ voices.

Jack paused. “They’re back in Amity Park?” Did he need to report that to Vlad’s office?

Phantom shook his head. “No. I … went out. Stupid. Thought they’d stopped, though.”

Stopped hunting him, Jack supposed he meant. The GIW’s last operation in Amity Park had been devoted entirely to capturing Phantom; they’d failed in their mission but had succeeded in endangering a significant portion of Danny’s sophomore class, which had ended in Pamela Manson paying for scathing editorials about the GIW in every local news outlet and in Vlad pushing through a proposal to make Amity Park a sanctuary city from the GIW. Jack still wasn’t sure how he felt about the latter. He knew that his wife and daughter both heartily approved of the legislation, if for different reasons — keeping the GIW from getting in the way of the Fentons’ work versus making a gesture towards desiring better relations with the ghosts around town, as if ghosts would understand or care about such gestures — and he himself had felt proud when Vlad had cited the prowess of Amity Park’s own ghost hunters while signing the new law. He still felt that his childhood heroes were being treated unfairly in the matter, though, and knowing that he and Maddie could never call the GIW to town for backup was unsettling.

Phantom buckled forward, and Jack reached out to steady him. If the collar was draining him, it was probably doing it at a constant rate, but it might now be down to the last dregs of his strength. Jack moved his hand towards the collar, but Phantom caught his wrist. “They didn’t touch it without really thick gloves,” Phantom told him. “You probably shouldn’t either.”

Jack went to fetch a far thicker pair of hazmat gloves than his flexible everyday gloves. While he was at it, he grabbed several handheld cutting, soldering, and prying tools that had been coated in ectophobic paint. If the collar had had an obvious release mechanism, the ghost would likely have found it already. Designing something like that without an emergency off-switch or release seemed irresponsible to Jack, but maybe other ecto-engineers’ inventions didn’t explode with quite the same regularity that Jack’s tended to.

Phantom was curled up sideways on the floor by the time Jack returned. His eyes were still half-open, but they gave off only a faint luminescence compared to their usual bright light. He didn’t protest as Jack turned him this way and that to access different parts of the collar. The chill of the ghost’s aura reached through the thick gloves to Jack’s skin, but the ghost’s body itself, once Jack gripped hard enough for it to feel solid, was warmer than he had expected.

It took Jack about ten minutes to break the collar open at the weak point of the port on its back. Phantom flickered only once, squeezing his fists in concentration as he held onto his solidity. He was sitting slumped and faced away from Jack when Jack finally wrenched the device free and tossed it aside, and Phantom gasped and collapsed backward, his back hitting Jack’s chest and his head falling to rest against Jack’s shoulder.

Jack instinctively wrapped his arms around the little ghost. Phantom, evidently exhausted, curled into the unthinking embrace. That response felt … odd, confiding, like a lion cub had decided to curl up in Jack’s lap. In the drained state he was in, the ghost’s behavior ought be more instinctive than calculated. Huh.

Phantom’s aura had stopped fading, but it didn’t strengthen as Jack held him. Right. The ghost still needed an influx of energy to stabilize. Jack could always flush him into the Ghost Zone, but he wasn’t sure that would be enough, nor that no other ghost who found a weakened Phantom right next to the portal would decide to finish him off. A destabilization explosion on either side of the portal would be bad for the portal’s structural integrity.

And anyway, Jack sort of … wanted to know what became of Phantom. The Fentons and the little hero ghost had been sparring, and sometimes working together when the situation demanded it, for coming up on two years, and Jack had never had an easy time letting go of people. Not that the ghost was a person, exactly. He was just … an aspect of life in Amity Park that had grown comfortingly familiar.

Jack scooped the arm that wasn’t supporting Phantom’s head under the ghost’s knees, picked him up, and carried him to the main containment chamber, heedless of the dripping ectoplasm. Phantom’s eyes flickered open when Jack flushed the chamber empty. “I’m going to get a flow of spectral energy from the Ghost Zone going in here,” Jack explained. “It should help stabilize you.”

“Mm,” Phantom acknowledged. The sound was more echo than voice. His eyes closed again.

Jack knelt to lay Phantom out on the containment chamber’s floor. He paused, biting his lip, then pulled a sleeping bag pill from his utility belt and expanded it. Phantom yawned as Jack transferred him into the sleeping bag. There was a built-in pillow, and the ghost’s white hair, blurring at the edges as it always did, seemed to dissolve into the pillow itself.

Jack left him there and closed the containment chamber so that he could safely start the flow of spectral energy. He checked on the chamber’s readings as he did. The amount of spectral energy radiating out of Phantom himself was … terrifyingly low. Still high enough that the ghost could have fought Jack off and made a break for it once he was free of the collar, if only just, but certainly too low for him to be operating on more than the most basic impulses of his obsession.

Once Jack was sure that spectral energy was flowing into the main containment chamber at a steady rate, he went to pick the collar up and stuffed it into a portable containment cube so that he could take the unwieldy gloves off. He looked back at Phantom as he did. The ghost’s aura was … maybe slightly brighter than before? It was difficult to tell through the distortion of the containment chamber’s walls.

Is absorbing the spectral energy around him going to be enough? Jack didn’t know. He was the engineer of the duo, although Maddie was certainly no slouch at engineering herself; he didn’t know any more about ectobiology than he had to in order to design weapons and containment devices.

“Maddie!” Jack called. All the way upstairs and asleep, his wife probably couldn’t hear him. He took a step towards the stairs and paused, glancing back. Phantom hadn’t moved yet, but if the ghost pulled one of his disappearing acts or started destabilizing again while no one was watching, then Jack wouldn’t be able to … He actually wasn’t sure what he might be able to do besides suck the ghost into a Fenton Thermos and hope that Phantom wouldn’t be even less stable upon release.

He pulled out his cell phone.

Maddie didn’t pick up until the second call. She must have been sleeping with her earplugs in. “Jack?” she murmured muzzily into the phone. “What ‘s it?”

“Can you come down to the lab, Mads?” Jack asked. “I’ve got Phantom in the containment chamber and —”

“You’ve caught Phantom?!” The sleepiness in Maddie’s voice was suddenly replaced with excitement.

Jack paused. “Caught” was maybe a strong word for what had happened. But he did, he realized, now have Amity Park’s most elusive ghost locked securely in their containment chamber, with no immediate crisis to demand that he be let back out.

“He was trying to steal more of our stuff. He’s not doing too great, though.” Jack could see a faint green stain beginning to seep out from under the sleeping bag.

“I’ll be right down.” Maddie hung up.

She must have meant the “right,” because she appeared in the lab not even a minute later, still dressed in her pajamas, a notebook clutched to her chest. She beamed when she saw the apparently-sleeping figure in the containment chamber and stood on her tiptoes to kiss Jack’s cheek.

“I married the world’s best ghost hunter,” Maddie told him.

“Ha! Fat chance of that, Maddie; they wouldn’t let you marry yourself! I’m glad you settled for second-best, though.”

That earned him a second peck on the cheek before Maddie let her focus shift fully to the ghost in the containment chamber. “Is that a sleeping bag?” she asked.

“Yeah, his spectral energy’s really low. I’ve got some flowing into that chamber from the portal, but I don’t know if it’ll be enough to stabilize him.”

“It might be for a lower-class ghost, but I don’t know about for him.” She crouched in front of the containment chamber’s wall. “He spends so little time in the Ghost Zone compared to the others; he must be fueling himself some other way. Hey, Phantom?” She raised her voice and started knocking on the clear ectophobic wall.

The ghost shifted deeper into the sleeping bag when the knocking started and then, as it continued, poked his head out and blearily rubbed his eyes at Maddie, looking like nothing so much as a rumpled teenager.

“Hi, Phantom,” Maddie said loudly enough to be sure the sound permeated the containment chamber’s walls. “Your spectral energy’s too low right now. Do you know what would stabilize you?”

The ghost blinked a few times, either processing the question or processing that it was a question, before he answered, “Ecto-dejecto,” pointing a finger towards the cabinet he’d failed to reach into earlier.

Ecto-dejecto? That was odd; Jack had made that to de-stabilize ghosts slowly enough to avoid an explosion, although its effect had proved to be rather the opposite —

“Ah!” Jack said, enlightened. He dashed to the chemical cabinet.

“Careful!” Phantom called after him, halting him for just long enough to recall the earlier crashing noise of containers falling over from Phantom’s failed attempt to get to the ecto-dejecto. Jack stopped and pulled back on the extra-thick gloves before opening the cabinet doors.

There wasn’t too much of a spill, thankfully, and no explosions, and the ecto-dejecto appeared to be unharmed, if in lower supply than Jack had expected. This probably hadn’t been Phantom’s first time using it. Jack tossed a chemical absorption pad onto the floor to catch any of the spill that dripped down and took out a glass bottle of ecto-dejecto. Maddie had already pulled on lab gloves and fetched a syringe.

“Should I turn off the flow from the portal?” Jack asked. The spectral energy readings from the containment chamber weren’t nearly high enough to hurt anyone if they opened the door, but every once in a rare while a ghost would get sucked into the chamber alongside the spectral energy. Usually the Cardboard Creep, who seemed fond of the containment chamber’s cubic shape.

“No need; if he knows how the ecto-dejecto works, he should be able to apply it himself if we give it to him through the thermos port.” Maddie finished filling the syringe, capped it, and placed it in an inactive Fenton Thermos as she spoke. She stuck the Thermos to the compatible port on the containment chamber wall. “Ready to catch, Phantom?” she asked with her finger on the “Release” button.

Jack sometimes had a hard time reading the facial expressions of people outside his family, but he’d never struggled with the expressions Phantom pantomimed. The ghost’s face appeared puzzled for a moment, and then his eyes went fear-wide. His gaze searched the containment chamber as if it had only belatedly occurred to him as well that he was trapped. He flickered into a blur. The green puddle under the sleeping bag expanded.

“Phantom!” Maddie cried, pressing down on the button to propel the syringe of ecto-dejecto into the chamber. The ghost resolidified in time to catch it and depress the plunger into his arm. His form shivered at the application, then blurred again, then abruptly snapped into focus with more definition than Jack could ever remember seeing before. It took a great deal of energy for a ghost to render its features that distinct, and most rarely bothered.

Jack felt a pang of familiarity staring at Phantom’s face, but the edges of the ghost’s form took on their usual blurriness again before he could place it.

Phantom’s aura looked noticeably brighter than it had been before the ecto-dejecto. The ghost was floating now, dangling his boots about a foot off the ground, and no longer dripping ectoplasm. Maddie sighed in relief. Jack felt his shoulders go slack with the same sentiment.

As the Fentons watched, Phantom drifted back to the far wall of the containment chamber, stopping just before he hit the wall and folding his arms over his chest. His form remained solid.

Maddie turned her notebook to a fresh page and started writing. “Jack,” she asked, “can you shut off the energy from the portal now and set the chamber’s readings to record? We should see how much of the ambient spectral energy he absorbs.”

Jack did as Maddie asked. The computer beeped twice in acknowledgement.

“Soooo,” Phantom said slowly, his voice now strong enough to be clearly heard through the echoing. “The odds of you guys calling it a night and flushing me back into the Ghost Zone once you’re sure I’m not destabilizing are …?”

Maddie and Jack looked up to stare at him. They didn’t reply, which should be reply enough.

“How about if I say please?” Phantom prompted.

Maddie shook her head.

“Pretty please with a cherry on top?”

“Phantom,” said Maddie, smiling slightly, “did you really think we’d never catch you stealing our stuff?”

“Hey, I’m only using it for ghost hunting!” Phantom protested. “You guys share it around to ghost hunters anyway! I can’t pay you in cash, but I always charge your ecto-batteries.”

Maddie shook her head again. “The ecto-batteries charge up from being near the portal.”

“There’s not enough energy lying around to charge them that way!”

“Uh, Mads,” Jack put in, thinking back to his repeated failure to measure how long it took an ecto-battery to charge, because they all seemed to reach full charge in batches regardless of when they’d begun charging. “That checks out, actually.”

“Oh? Oooh.” Maddie scribbled another line in her notebook. “Maybe we can wire some sensors onto him and convince him to charge one to see how it works.” Although convincing a ghost to use its powers on command was far easier said than done.

The ghost in question groaned and put his head in his hands. “You guys always know just how to make a bad day worse, don’t you? Wasn’t two nightmare scenarios enough for one night?”

Jack felt a twinge of guilt, like from tricking a cat into a travel carrier. He and Maddie seemed to play the part of “annoying allies” most of the time in Phantom’s playing-at-hero view of the world, which, considering that the Fentons were the ghost boy’s unwilling suppliers of everything from battle weaponry down to his suit (Jack would admit to feeling some pride in the fact that not even a class-seven ghost had been able to make or find a suit with a better balance of maneuverability, comfort, and protection against ectoblasts than a Fenton Jumpsuit), certainly made sense. It was no betrayal for the Fentons to act otherwise, though. They’d never agreed to their role in his obsession.

Phantom sank to the floor with a sigh at Jack and Maddie’s lack of response. “Please tell me you were at least serious about the ‘no dissection over complexity class two’ thing,” he said. “I’d really rather my molecules stay where they are, thanks.”

“Of course,” said Maddie, looking up in surprise from the notes she was taking on the ghost’s behavior. She and Jack had had to write out a list of ethics guidelines after an Amity Park News report on their ectobiology papers had led to an outcry among the portion of the population who backed Phantom or Ember McLain or the tourist industry that promised to reconnect visitors with the ghosts of lost loved ones (how that industry was still afloat when the vast majority of deaths never sparked the formation of a ghost, Jack had no idea, but at least it produced a steady demand for Fenton Ghost Gabbers). Most of the ethics guidelines were silly, as the Fentons had yet to discover any means by which ghosts could experience pain, but there was enough evidence of ghosts having something like consciousness now to genuinely warrant guidelines on procedures that might terminate consciousness, at least until the mechanism behind it was better understood. There were exceptions in the guidelines made for ghosts that were causing clear and present danger to human life, but the public was hardly going to approve of such an exception’s being applied to Phantom.

“Great.” Phantom leaned his head back against the containment chamber’s wall.

Maddie returned to writing notes. “You may be an imprinted simulation of conscious experience running on charged ectoplasm, but that’s still a working theory,” she said. They still needed a better understanding of the mechanism by which ghosts developed plans to satisfy the obsessions that held them together. They knew that ectons responded to and carried emotional energy in much the same way that electrons responded to and carried electricity, but the circuitry, so to speak, of ghosts remained unclear. “And we Fentons keep our word.”

“Yeah,” Phantom sighed. “Family trait.”

Maddie turned her head. “Jack, what do the spectral energy readings look like?”

Jack looked away from the ghost to check the computer. “Stable now. Huh, they spiked a few seconds after I turned off the influx from the portal. Was that some kind of delayed reaction to the ecto-dejecto?”

“Interesting,” said Maddie, making a note. “Worth looking into. Is he stable enough for sampling now?”

“Looks like.”

The ghost in the containment chamber shivered.

Jack hesitated, staring at Phantom. Nothing the Fentons were planning to do would harm the ghost, of course — not with those rapid-regeneration abilities they’d documented from his fights — but ghosts rarely responded well to confinement. If one were to go with the increasingly popular analogy of ghosts being like dangerous wildlife, then Jack supposed trapping a ghost in one spot would be analogous to trapping a nocturnal animal in broad daylight with no cover. Maybe Phantom was dreading being confined to a lab table rather than just to the comparatively spacious containment chamber.

“Here, Maddie, have you got the sampling kit?” Jack asked, scratching his chin. “I have an idea.”

Maddie, halfway to the closet where some of their spare jumpsuits were stored, paused. “What is it?”

“We can do the sampling in there, yeah? And then we won’t be stuck smelling that knockout gas all week.” There was a downside to ghosts’ weakness to foul scents.

Maddie thought it over. She glanced at their scowling but thus far unaggressive research subject. “Well, alright; we can try. Let me get changed.”

Jack grinned at her. She smiled back before stepping into the closet.

Phantom was still sitting with his knees curled up and his head leaned against the far containment chamber wall when Jack lined up in front of the door with Maddie behind him, a Fenton Thermos in her hand. Either of them could take ectoplasm and membrane samples, but Maddie was the better shot. Phantom just stared resignedly at the ceiling and didn’t try to move as Jack stepped in and Maddie shut the door again behind him.

Jack could feel a buzz from the high level of ambient spectral energy in the chamber. He hopped over the empty, ectoplasm-stained sleeping bag, hoisting the kit of sampling supplies high. The ectoplasm stains could be analyzed if needed, but clean, uncontaminated samples would serve them far better.

“Alright, spook,” said Jack, crouching in front of the ghost, “I need five vials of ectoplasm and three membrane samples. Want to do this the easy way?”

Phantom shrugged. “Fine, whatever.”

“Attaboy.” Jack settled himself on the ground — maybe he should have brought in chairs — and laid out the vials, sampling needle, and syringe. “Here, you can lean against me if you want,” he offered. It wouldn’t make his work that much more difficult, and it had seemed to comfort Phantom before.

Phantom’s eyes flashed. Jack squinted against the green glare. “Why would I want that?” asked the ghost.

Jack frowned. “Well, you did it earlier —”

“And look where that got me,” Phantom interrupted bitterly.

The tricked-a-cat-into-a-carrier guilt returned in such force that Jack nearly protested that he hadn’t been thinking of containing Phantom when he’d put him in here, only of keeping him stable, not that his intentions at the time made much difference now. He’d never felt quite so wrong-footed when dealing with a ghost before. He would normally chalk the feeling up to Phantom’s trying to get into his head, but the ghost had been so devastatingly low on energy earlier and still showed signs of exhaustion, which ghosts normally tried to hide. Jack had a hard time believing he was pulling any elaborate tricks.

Phantom turned his face away. He didn’t look back while he unvelcroed his right glove from his suit, pulled it off, pushed his sleeve up past his elbow, and offered Jack his arm. “Just aim for a vein, please,” he said.

The ghost’s arm was startlingly detailed. It was common for ghosts with complex forms to generate some manner of skeletal and muscular structure, but Jack had never seen veins on one before, nor wrinkles and freckles and arm hair. He took Phantom’s elbow gently and swabbed the inner side with disinfectant. Phantom looked back when Jack stuck the needle into the widest vein, then looked away again.

The green ectoplasm drawn into the sampling vials was less gooey than ectoplasm usually was. A drop of it beaded on the ghost’s skin when Jack withdrew the needle, acting so much like blood that Jack pulled a band-aid from his supply belt and applied it over the puncture. He rubbed a circle on the ghost’s skin in comfort. Phantom blinked down at Jack’s thumb and the glow-in-the-dark stars adorning the band-aid — Jack hadn’t yet run through his stock from back when Danny had been scraping his knees on every surface in sight — and a clear, faintly glowing liquid started dripping down his cheeks.

Jack stared. Hey, ghost tears! Let me swab a sample! was probably not the right response for the situation. “Uh,” he offered instead.

Phantom finally looked up from the band-aid and pulled his arm out of Jack’s grip.

“Phantom?” Maddie’s anxious, muffled voice came through the chamber walls. Jack turned to see her shielding her eyes to peer in at them. “Are you destabilizing again?”

“No, Mo— Maddie,” Phantom answered. He dried his face with his gloved hand.

Jack exchanged a glance with his wife. She looked as confused as he felt. Ghosts’ gestures and expressions were tools of communication, nothing more. They’d never seen a ghost cry before and had no idea what it might mean when the ghost in question was unharmed. Unless — “Are you hurt?” Jack asked. Phantom had seemed stable, but maybe being drained nearly dry had had other effects besides endangering his stability.

“No, I’m. Sorry; you reminded me of … someone.”

Jack frowned. “Someone you miss?”

“Ha. You could say that.” Phantom smiled as if at a private joke.

“Well, uh …” Jack scratched the back of his neck. The ghost probably wasn’t trying to signal any desire for a hug, judging by his earlier words. Nor for fudge, since ghosts didn’t need to eat in the Real World. “Do you … need a moment?”

Phantom looked up and met his eyes. Jack had to look away after a second to protect his retinas from the ghost’s ocular glow. When he looked back, Phantom was staring down at the band-aid again.

The ghost grimaced. “Right. Look,” he said, “I’m tired, it’s I-don’t-even-want-to-know how early in the morning, and the easiest way to bust out of here would probably wreck half the lab, so could you just finish up with your samples and let me go already?”

Jack’s eyes widened and met Maddie’s. He didn’t think it was an idle threat, and from the looks of it, neither did she. Phantom was elusive for more reasons than just being difficult to catch: given enough time, he could blast his way out of any bonds, bypass any ghost shield (Jack had no idea how the ghost managed that; he would have sworn the shields were impervious), and had once even vanished from a Fenton Thermos (Jack wasn’t sure how he’d managed that one, either. All that Jazz, who’d been holding onto the Thermos at the time, had been able to tell him was that the Thermos had been full one moment and empty the next).

Jack and Maddie had a duty as deputized Amity Park ghost hunters to hold Phantom for as long as they could. Technically. “Half” was rather a lot of lab to repair. Also, no one had spoken out against the Red Huntress’s forging an alliance with Phantom months ago except for Vlad and a few property insurance companies. Most of the town seemed to believe either that Phantom’s explanations on Action News about an overshadowing epidemic in City Hall and a circus ringmaster with a ghost-controlling orb were truthful or that the ghost’s most destructive early days had passed as he’d settled into his hero obsession.

Maddie tapped her pen against her chin in thought. “I want to take electrogram measurements on how you charge an ecto-battery,” she said at last. “If you cooperate with that, then, yes.”

Jack grinned wide, struck by his wife’s brilliance. He was still astonished some days that someone so clever and beautiful had married him. He truly was the luckiest man in the world.

Phantom scowled again, but his shoulders relaxed. “Alright,” he agreed.

Maddie prepped the electrodes while Jack finished taking samples of skin — membrane — well, it looked a lot like skin in Phantom’s case, and the punch biopsy tool Jack was using was technically designed for skin anyway, so he might as well think of it as skin — and storing them in neutralized ectoplasm. Interestingly, the samples seemed more solid once outside of the ghost’s aura, as if the concentrated ghostly energy was phasing them slightly out of tangibility rather than forcing volatile ectoplasm to maintain a solid form.

The ghost yanked his sleeve back down over the array of star band-aids when Jack was done. Maddie opened the containment chamber door and beckoned them both out. When she asked Phantom to take his jumpsuit off to the waist so she could apply electrodes near the center of his ghost core, he hesitated.

“You agreed,” Maddie reminded him, gently.

Phantom grimaced. “Yeah, I know, I keep my word,” he said, echoing Maddie’s earlier statement. He sighed. “Just … don’t ask about the scars, okay? Or the pecs.”

Ghosts get scars? thought Jack.

“Okay,” said Maddie.

Phantom took off his gloves and pulled the jumpsuit down to his waist. As soon as the left glove was off, Jack caught sight of a branching green mass of lines on the ghost’s palm. It ran up his arm and then down his larger-than-expected chest and his abdomen in one main thick line with countless smaller lines bifurcating off of it, like streams converging into a river, or like the leaves of a fern, or like lightning.

Jack opened his mouth to ask how the scar had formed and Maddie immediately slapped her hand over it. Phantom shot her a grateful smirk.

Applying the measurement electrodes took far less time than Jack had expected. Having a willing, if grudging, subject made things significantly easier. Jack managed to rustle up four ecto-batteries in need of charging, and Maddie had Phantom charge the first two in succession, then the last two both at once, “Ooh”-ing at the electrogram readouts each time. Even Jack, less well-trained in electrograms, could track on the readouts the energy pulses that originated from the central core around Phantom’s navel and ran through his arms down to the batteries.

“Can you do a few ectoblasts next?” Maddie asked excitedly when the ghost set the last charged battery down with a yawn.

Phantom frowned and looked like he was about to remind them that that wasn’t part of their deal when his eye caught on the nearby lab bench. “Actually, yeah,” he said. “Hand me that, though.”

“What, this?” Maddie picked up the portable containment cube with the broken GIW collar inside. She frowned. Phantom took it in his own hands and stepped out in front of her and Jack. “What is —?” Maddie started to ask but was cut off by Phantom tossing the cube into the air before them and slamming it with three rapid-fire ectoblasts.

The containment cube and the collar within both burst into flaming pieces. Phantom threw an ectoshield up in front of them as the pieces fell.

“There you go,” said the ghost, dusting his hands and smiling. “Plenty of data on ectobla—”

One of the flaming pieces hit the green-stained chemical absorption pad on the floor. The pad exploded.

“Aw, fu…dge,” said Phantom, dropping his shield and shooting ice at the fire. He phased out of the electrodes and ran to the Fenton’s chemical cleanup supplies. The electrodes fell to the floor in a heap. Phantom grabbed the largest chemical absorption mat, threw it over the icy mess on the floor, and then iced the whole thing over again. “Please tell me nothing in this cabinet explodes on contact with liquid water.”

Jack and Maddie mutely shook their heads.

“Great.” The ghost flew back to the cleanup supplies to fetch a long, tubular absorbent boom.

“How’d you learn lab safety rules?” Jack asked as he watched the ghost lay the boom in a circle around the ice so that it would absorb any bits of melted chemical solution that escaped the pad and the mat.

“The hard way,” Phantom grumbled. He cleared his throat, rubbing his eyes with the base of his palm. “Anyway. This should be safe for right now, and we’re … uh. Yeah. Well. G’night, then.” The ghost vanished.

“Huh! He usually has a snappier parting phrase than that,” Jack commented. His wife didn’t respond. “Maddie?”

“Mm?” she asked. Jack turned to see her frantically scribbling in her notebook. She looked up at him with a gleam in her eye. “Jack, do you realize we just got electrogram data on Phantom’s ectoblasts, ectoshields, ice, and intangibility? Well, at least until the electrodes fell through him,” she amended for the latter.

“Alright!” said Jack, grinning.

“And the ectoplasm and membrane samples and a new way of charging ecto-batteries … There might be three whole papers in this!”

“How about that! We should catch that spook stealing our stuff more often!”

Maddie smiled back at him, then bit her lip. “Do you know why he was in such bad shape?” she asked him, sounding far more hesitant than he was used to from her.

“Ah.” Jack grimaced as the memory of Phantom curled up on the floor of the lab and oozing ectoplasm sprang unbidden to his mind. “Run-in with the Guys in White, apparently.”

“They’re back in Amity Park?” exclaimed Maddie.

“No, he said he went out. Guess they’re still after him, though.”

Maddie tapped her pen against her chin.

“What is it, Mads?” Jack asked, dragging himself out of his own thoughts and taking in his wife’s troubled expression.

Slowly, she told him, “I doubt we can be the ghost hunters Amity Park needs for much longer if a ghost being hurt bothers us this much.”

“It bothered you, too, huh?” said Jack, his voice dropping. He supposed it had been obvious that he’d been bothered. He’d never much thought about losing Phantom before tonight, about the ghost’s being not just diminished and contained but gone, and he didn’t like that that was possible. Phantom was the first ghost Jack had ever seen and remained one of the most fascinating of their adversaries.

Maddie nodded, her gaze distant. “We’ve never seen him like that before. I wanted to hug him, almost.”

“I did that before you got down.”

“What?” Maddie blinked at him, then clicked her pen open and held up her notebook. “How did he react?”

“Curled against me like a kitten.” Or like Jack had always assumed a kitten who genuinely liked him would, anyway. Cats tended not to like him as much as dogs did. Or as much as ghosts did, apparently.

“That’s … odd.”

“You’re telling me!”

“His energy was so low he could barely hold his form together, let alone …”

“Yeah.” Jack shook his head. All of the Fentons’ research thus far suggested that a ghost’s capacity for higher-level planning and trickery depended on its power level, and Phantom had been nearly down to the power level of a blob ghost at the time.

Maddie was still frowning into the middle distance when Jack looked up. He nudged her shoulder. “Well,” he said, giving her a smile, “it’s a good thing we’re scientists, yeah? We’ve got data, and we know how to make it give us answers!”

Maddie smiled back. Her shoulders relaxed, and he rubbed them for her, feeling a surge of pride. “Sometimes you know just what to say, don’t you?” she said.

“Even my aim is true once in a while!” He grinned.

“I love you, Jack.” She leaned against him.

“Love you too, Maddie.”

“Let’s get some sleep, hm?”

“Sounds good,” Jack agreed, finally feeling the exhaustion of the long night settle into his bones. He turned them towards the stairs and flicked off the main lab lights. “I’ll bet even that ghost is too tired to be a menace right now. We’ll have quite the story to tell the kids when they get home tomorrow, eh?”

Maddie yawned. “We sure will.”

Chapter Text

Tucker picked up his phone on the third ring. “H’lo?” he mumbled.

“Hey, Tuck, it’s me,” Danny replied. He’d grabbed one of the burner phones out of his bedroom on his way out, along with his toothbrush and a change of clothes; Tucker probably didn’t have this number saved.

He heard Tucker groan. “Dude, it’s 4 a.m. How do you still have the energy to be a menace right now?” The sound of fabric shifting came through the phone. “Alright, what do you need me to look up for you?” Tucker asked.

“Uh,” Danny replied. “Actually, can I use your guest room?”

“What?” Tucker’s voice snapped to alertness. “Aren’t you in Chicago tonight?”

“I was, yeah. Long story.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” Danny told him, which may not have been precisely true, but he wasn’t destabilizing and/or in the hands of mad scientists at the moment, so he’d count that as a win.

Tucker was quiet for a few seconds, Danny assumed to give him a chance to say more. He didn’t say more.

“Alright,” said Tucker. “I’ll get the guest bed ready and microwave a burrito for you.”

“Thanks, Tuck. You’re the best.”

“Man, don’t I know it,” Tucker agreed. “See you soon.”

Danny hung up. He could have just gone to their safe house, he supposed, but Jazz would be far less worried to hear he was at Tucker’s. And besides, the safe house didn’t have climate control or burritos.

Speaking of Jazz. Danny sighed, leaned against the tree he was sitting under, and called his sister.

She picked up on the first ring. “Danny?”

“Hey, Jazz,” he said.

“Danny! Where are you? Are you alright? Why didn’t you come back to the hostel? Do you need me to come pick you up?”

“I’m fine, Jazz, geez,” Danny told her. “It’s okay. I’m going to spend the night at Tucker’s —”

“Are you in Amity?”

“Yeah,” he admitted.

“What happened?”

Danny hesitated. He did owe her an explanation after disappearing on her like that. She was used to him being gone for a couple of hours, but not all night, and not without him checking in.

“So,” he began, slowly, “you remember how we thought the GIW gave up on catching Phantom?”

Jazz sucked in her breath. “Oh, no.”

“Yeah,” Danny agreed. “But I’m fine now. They can’t come into Amity, even if they tracked me all the way here.”

“Did they?”

“I …” He had no idea whether that phase-proof power-sucking collar had had a tracker built in. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Did something happen to draw their attention?” Jazz’s voice was tense with concern.

“I don’t know! I didn’t fight a ghost or anything,” Danny told her, throwing his free hand up. It smacked against the a low-hanging branch. Chicago was neither a hotspot for natural portals to the Ghost Zone like Amity Park nor home to any manufactured portals, and he’d relished the chance to fly around without having to constantly keep an eye out for ghost activity. Clearly, he should have kept an eye out anyway. Staying invisible didn’t keep him off of ghost trackers.

“I think …” Danny paused, recalling some of the conversation he’d overheard between the GIW agents before he’d gotten free. He swallowed hard. “I think they know that I’m linked to a portal, somehow. They still want to do away with the Ghost Zone altogether, so maybe they think if they can get me …” He didn’t finish that sentence.

“Oh, Danny.” Jazz sighed. “I’m so sorry. Are you planning to stay in Amity Park tomorrow?”

“Maybe forever,” Danny muttered, then abruptly realized that might not be an exaggeration. He’d known for months now that he planned to stay in town through college: the local university wasn’t bad, even if it was a bit of a no-namer, and if he was able to keep building up the town’s defenses and making deals with the ghosts at his current rate, then in six years he should be able to move out if he wanted to. His grades had been better this past year, and he’d still wanted to try for NASA someday, even if it was a bit of a moonshot. If he couldn’t leave Amity Park without the GIW immediately coming after him, though …

“We didn’t even get to go to the planetarium,” Jazz said, sadly.

“I know.” Danny rubbed his eyes. They prickled with tears.

“I’m so sorry,” Jazz repeated.

Drat it; now he was crying openly. This had been altogether too long of a night.

“Do you want me to come home?” Jazz asked.

“No,” Danny told her. “No, go get lunch with those grad students like you’d hoped to. Just let me know when you reach town tomorrow night and I’ll meet you then.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. Tucker said he’s got a burrito waiting for me.”

“Alright.” Jazz yawned. Had she been up all night waiting for him to come back? “I’ll see you then. Let me know if you need anything in the meantime.”

“Will do.”

“Take care, little brother.”

Danny stared down at the phone as the call ended. He could probably wait to call Sam. She hated mornings enough that she’d forgive him for not letting her know what had happened immediately, and he really didn’t have the energy to go over any part of tonight again until after he’d slept.

He put the phone away, wiped his face dry, changed back to ghost form, and took off for Tucker’s.

Tucker and the promised burrito were waiting in the Foley guest room when Danny phased in. Danny changed back to human form and made grabby motions at the plate. “You are the best best friend in the world,” Danny told him.

Tucker smiled, handing over the burrito. “And …?”

“And the biggest catch in all of Illinois,” Danny added just before stuffing his face full of beef, cheese, and tortilla.

“Man, the ladies don’t know what they’re missing out on.” Tucker flexed his arms with a grin. He broke off as he watched Danny. “You okay, dude?”

“‘M fine,” Danny said around a mouthful of burrito.

“You sure? You don’t look great.”

Danny swallowed. “Wait, am I still dripping ectoplasm?” He stared down at himself but didn’t see any telltale spots of green.

“Nah, I mean, you haven’t looked this down since Spectra’s last ‘therapy session.’ What happened?”

“Uh.” He didn’t look up. Tucker stepped over to the bed, plopping his robot-pajama’d butt down beside Danny. Danny swallowed again. “Can it wait till tomorrow? You know Sam will be all over me for details then anyway.”

Tucker considered. “Do you think you are about to start dripping ectoplasm?” he asked, reasonably.

“No, I shouldn’t. I got a shot of ecto-dejecto after getting away from the Guys in White.”

“Geez, those jerks are still after you?!”

“Apparently,” Danny sighed.

“I thought they were banned from Amity Park!”

“But not from Chicago.”

Tucker stared at him. “What hap—”

“Tucker,” Danny cut him off. “Tomorrow? Please?”

Tucker gave him a look of concern, then shook his head in concession. “Argh. You know I can’t say no to your puppydog eyes.” He nudged Danny’s shoulder and asked, more gently, “You need anything, bro?”

“Sleep. I desperately need sleep.”

“Alright.” Tucker stood up. “You know where the bathroom is. Wake me up again if you need anything.”

“Thanks.”

Despite his words to Tucker and his ever-increasing exhaustion, Danny didn’t fall asleep for a while after Tucker left. He kept drifting close to sleep and then jerking awake, expecting to find himself back in his parents’ containment chamber, locked in and waiting to be “sampled.” He gripped his lower right arm. The little circles of skin his father had cut out had closed over and didn’t hurt anymore, but they still tingled. He was pretty sure you were supposed to apply anesthetic before you did something like that. Not that that would matter to his parents, if it was just some ghost they were poking holes in.

He should have gone to Valerie instead. She kept a few vials of ecto-dejecto on hand, since Danielle seemed to have an easier time going to her on the (fortunately rare) occasions that she needed help than to Danny, and something on Valerie’s suit would probably have been able to break the GIW collar, if painfully. Valerie would have still been awake after covering his patrols while he was out of town. There was the ever-present threat that she’d tell his parents on him if she thought things were getting too risky — the only reason she hadn’t yet was that Jazz had talked her into giving him time, and Danny was half-convinced that Jazz’s main argument had been “think how much fun you’ll have blackmailing him in the meanwhile” — but she wouldn’t have done it right away, so he would have had time to convince her not to.

He’d been so stupid. He could have blamed that on the sheer exhaustion of having to ghostly wail his way free and then fly several hours home with that godforsaken collar sapping away his vitality the whole time, but that would only account for his decision to go home in the first place, not for his staying there once the collar was off. He could have gotten away then. He’d had enough strength still to last another few days before he really needed to worry about destabilizing. He could have left.

His eyes prickled again.

Why did he want so badly to trust his parents? Why had he seen his dad put his blaster down and run over to help him and immediately assumed that everything would be alright, not even considering that Jack Fenton might only want a stable specimen to experiment on? He curled up underneath the covers. He’d felt like a little kid, running to his dad because his dad could make the bullies go away (not that fleeing to his parents and getting his bullies coated in slime from their blasters had done much to stop the bullying in the long run), letting himself relax because he was home safe now, because the nightmare was over, because his dad would take care of everything and it would be alright.

He rubbed his thumb over the band-aids on his arm.

His parents had stuck to the ethics guidelines they’d made up, at least. They weren’t the GIW. Maybe they’d never have made their own version of that stupid collar even if he hadn’t destroyed its remains. They had working ecto-batteries, after all; they didn’t need to draw the power for their containment devices from the ghosts trapped inside. Really, they could have been worse, so much worse, to him than they had been.

He’d just always hoped that if it ever came down to it, they’d be better.

The burrito churned in his stomach. He winced and willed it to stay down.

Part of him wanted to leave, to get far away from Amity Park until the storm in his mind had cleared, but that wouldn’t be safe for him now, would it? The GIW was waiting outside the bounds of the sanctuary city. Possibly, they’d be waiting there for the rest of his life.

He could go live in the Ghost Zone like Danielle did, he supposed, but —

Oh, no, did he need to get a warning to Dani about the GIW hunt for Phantom? Would they close in on her in his stead? Most likely they wouldn’t; Dani’s ectosignature was sufficiently different from his that a search for him wouldn’t automatically turn her up, and aside from her monthly visits to Amity Park, her forays into the Real World were mostly by way of the natural portals that popped up all over the world. The GIW didn’t have a strong international presence, as far as Danny knew. And besides, Clockwork had promised to look out for her, so he would let her know if there was danger approaching in her timeline.

Danny didn’t want to live in the Zone, anyway. Dani seemed to enjoy it, but then, she’d never been anything other than a halfa and had been raised, at least to an extent, by another halfa: she fit in with other ghosts better than he ever would. And Danny knew that part of the reason she stayed in that dimension was because she didn’t want to live her life in the shadow of his own. He couldn’t move in and take that away from her.

He would just have to make do in Amity Park. He always had before, and the town still needed him. This was his home, his haunt; he wouldn’t trade its safety for anything. Not even for parents who loved and respected both halves of him.

… … …

Jazz was parked in the Nasty Burger lot with her windows down, scrolling through her phone, when Danny found her car and phased through the roof into the passenger seat. He turned visible.

“Danny!” Jazz exclaimed. She leaned over to hug him. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Do you want me to get you a Nasty shake?”

“I’m fine,” Danny sputtered, surprised by the lack of impromptu lectures about his disappearing on her in Chicago or about his dropping into her car unannounced instead of knocking on the door.

Jazz pushed him back just far enough to search his face, keeping her hands on his shoulders. “Are you really?” she asked. “There was a news report about a GIW van exploding on an exit from I-94.”

“Oh.” Danny winced. “No one else crashed, did they? The van got knocked off the road before any other cars caught up, right?”

“Danny, you didn’t tell me they’d caught you!”

“Yeah … well.” He grinned weakly. “Not for long?”

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Jazz’s gaze continued searching his face but evidently came up blank. “No, no other cars were hit.”

“Thank you.” Danny exhaled slowly. “I’m fine, Jazz. It’s over now. I wouldn’t say no to a Nasty shake, though.”

“I’ll take us through the drive-thru.”

“You’re the best.”

She gave him a smile, though it didn’t reach her eyes, nor do anything to alleviate the dark circles underneath them. “Buckle up,” she told him. “I think one vehicular disaster in twenty-four hours is enough for you.”

Danny laughed.

Jazz didn’t say more to him until they’d gotten their shakes and were pulling onto the road home. Danny savored the silence. Sam and Tucker had made him talk for what had felt like hours, going over every detail he could remember, and there were some details he just couldn’t. They’d ultimately agreed with him that it should be fine not to destroy his parents’ samples of his ectoplasm and skin, since his parents didn’t keep samples from his human form around to compare them to. His parents had never noticed that the faint ectosignature he gave off in human form matched Phantom’s, anyway, so he doubted his samples would clue them into his dual identity even if they sequenced the DNA.

Jazz cleared her throat. Danny looked over. Softly, she asked, “Ghostly wail?”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “Guess the GIW knows about that power, now.” He’d tried not to use his ghostly wail much even after he’d gotten better at not reverting to human form afterward, both because it was so broadly destructive and because anyone who knew about that power before they caught him might think to gag him so he couldn’t use it.

“They won’t get you in Amity Park,” Jazz reassured him. “If they so much as step foot over the city line, Vlad will throw so many lawyers at them the whole organization will collapse under the weight.”

“I know.” Danny smiled. “Almost makes me glad he’s mayor.” Almost.

“His approval rating’s still six points lower than Phantom’s,” Jazz offered, hearing the bitterness in his voice.

Danny’s smile continued through clenched teeth. “I would feel better about his whole good-mayor schtick if he wasn’t doing it just to get to me.” Although if Danny didn’t find it legitimately infuriating every time that fruitloop’s public approval rating got within spitting distance of his own hard-won rating, he supposed Vlad would stop doing it. This would have been a really clever scheme to make Vlad use his stolen billions on something good if only Danny had done it on purpose.

“At least he’s found a constructive outlet for his energy.”

There were some days when Danny regretted telling Vlad to get a hobby and a cat.

“Danny?” asked Jazz.

“Hm?”

“Was that …” His sister hesitated, as if picking her words carefully. “Was the thing with the GIW all that happened last night? I mean, goodness knows that would be more than enough, I just know that …”

“That life likes to kick me when I’m down?” he finished for her, dryly.

“Well, yeah.”

Danny sighed and turned to stare out the window. His Nasty shake slowly warmed in his lap, and he frosted the outside of the cup to keep it from melting.

“That was pretty much it,” he half-lied. He didn’t think he could get through another round of recounting everything that had happened last night, especially right now, when he had to be ready to face his parents in a few minutes. “I flew home, got a shot of ecto-dejecto from the lab, grabbed the phone and a change of clothes, and went to Tucker’s.” He took a sip from his shake.

“Alright.” Jazz’s shoulders relaxed ever so slightly. “You might want to be a little more careful flying into and out of the house, though. Mom said she saw you last night when she called earlier.”

Danny nearly choked. “What?!”

“She didn’t sound too ‘we’re going to lock Fentonworks down against ghost incursions’ about it,” she reassured him. Their mother must not have told her everything about last night, if Jazz thought that was what Danny was concerned about. “Just. Be careful, okay? Or maybe —”

“Yeah, I know,” Danny interrupted before she could give him another hint that he should tell their parents about his ghost half already. Jazz tried not to overpressure him, but her hope that his secret would come clear before she left for college in a few months grew increasingly obvious as the time wound down.

Danny entertained a brief notion of barging in and telling his parents the second Jazz pulled into the driveway. The looks on their faces as they recalled the previous night would be priceless. But … he really didn’t want to do it that way. He really, really didn’t.

“I just,” he said, swallowing. He breathed carefully. “I just want them to have a better relationship with ghost-me first, y’know?” He didn’t think that his parents would attack or disown him if they found out right now, nor try to “cure” him if he told them not to, most likely, but even just the thought of his mom and dad falling over themselves with apologies that they were only willing to give him because he turned out to be half-human was … less than pleasant.

“Yeah,” Jazz sighed. “I know. I wish they would, too.”

… … …

Danny’s relative peace lasted until two minutes into dinner. His parents had ordered in, presumably too busy studying his samples to bother with cooking or even with driving to a restaurant. He wasn’t complaining. Their food hadn’t even had a chance to get contaminated from whatever was in the GAV.

Their dad had insisted on a family dinner to welcome the kids home from Chicago. Jazz was still waxing on about the lecture she’d attended and about her lunch with two of the professor’s graduate students, as she had been since their parents’ first question about the trip, covering for Danny’s inability to say anything about the planetarium exhibit.

Jack at least waited until Jazz stopped talking to take a bite of chicken fried rice before he boomed, “Big news, Jazz, Danny! Some ghosts have nerve cells!”

Oh no. “That’s great, Dad,” Danny said as unenthusiastically as he could, not that a lack of enthusiasm on the part of a conversation partner had ever stopped Jack before. He turned to his sister, silently willing her to chew faster and return them all to the previous topic. She raised an eyebrow and lifted her water glass to her lips. “So, Jazz —” he tried.

“We’re not sure yet whether they function the same way as a human’s, but they’re definitely there and exchanging signals!” Jack went on, possibly not hearing Danny’s weak attempt to redirect the conversation. “We caught Phantom last night, and all three of the membrane samples we took —”

Jazz spewed her water all across the table.

“Danny?” she coughed, evidently forgetting where they were. She gaped at him.

“Kids?” asked their mom. She looked confusedly back and forth between Danny and Jazz as she wiped her face dry.

Jazz blinked. “Why are you kicking my legs?” she quickly covered.

Danny folded his arms to play along. “They’re in my quadrant of the table,” he said. “Keep them in your own quadrant. My legs need the space.”

“They are in my quadrant. You’re stretching your legs out too far!”

“Kids,” Maddie sighed.

They subsided. “Sorry, Mom,” said Danny. “It was a long drive, is all.”

“Sorry, Mom,” Jazz echoed. She wiped her mouth with her napkin. “What were you saying, Dad, that you guys caught Phantom —”

This time, Danny kicked her for real.

“Sure did!” their dad said, beaming. “Only managed to keep him for about an hour, but man, what a lot of data we got! I almost want to get a grant for an x-ray or an MRI in case we catch him stealing our stuff again. We’d see a lot more than goo in him, that’s for sure.”

Jazz looked at her parents thoughtfully. “You know, you could always ask him instead of trying to capture him,” she suggested. “If you have signed subject consent forms, they might even let you use the university’s research facilities.”

“Or they could mind their own business and just study the data they already got,” Danny grumbled, slumping deeper into his chair. He had to stop himself from rubbing his right arm. He’d taken off the band-aids before he’d left Tucker’s, and there weren’t any visible marks on him, but the parts of his arm that his dad had taken samples from still tingled faintly. “Why would a ghost ever agree to be stuffed into an MRI?”

“As a show of good faith,” Jazz told him sternly. “A basis for building a better relationship.” She let her gaze linger on him before she turned back to their parents. “You know Phantom already has an alliance with the Red Huntress, right? He’s obviously not opposed to working with ghost hunters.”

“Hey, you’re right,” said Jack.

Maddie looked thoughtful. “He was pretty cooperative last night, aside from threatening to destroy the lab,” she mused. Danny suppressed a groan. “Maybe he would …” She didn’t finish.

“It can’t hurt to ask,” Jazz pressed.

“What do ya say, Mads?” asked Jack, slapping his hand on the table in enthusiasm for the plan. “Should we try to flag him down after the next ghost fight?”

Jazz held up a finger of caution before their mother could reply. “You would need to make a show of good faith too,” she told their parents. “You’ve been hunting Phantom for almost two years; he’s not gonna just call bygones and help you research him without a good reason to trust you first.”

“You could offer him a whole bunch of money in return,” Danny suggested.

“Danny, come on,” Jazz told him. She spread her hands out. “Think bigger picture, here. This could be an opportunity for real change!”

Their mother sighed and shook her head. “Sweetie, I know you think we can ‘improve relations’ with the invading ghosts, but ghosts really aren’t complex enough for that,” she told Jazz.

Jazz folded her arms. “Didn’t you just say Phantom has a nervous system?”

Maddie paused.

“Why won’t you just try it?” Jazz asked. “You obviously don’t know everything about ghosts if Phantom’s samples surprised you. You’re scientists; shouldn’t you test the hypothesis that ghosts can have complex relationships like humans do before you dismiss it?”

“That would be anthropomorphizing,” said Maddie.

“So what? Assuming that ghosts are nothing like humans has got to be at least as much of an error as assuming they’re exactly like humans. You need to test every explanation, not just the ones you like best!”

“You know, it could be worth it, Maddie,” Jack put in. He sounded so much more hesitant than usual that it reminded Danny of the previous night. Danny shivered.

Maddie bit her lip. “I agree, but … we would need to call a ceasefire at least. And that could be dangerous.”

“How would that be dangerous?” Jazz demanded.

“Because there aren’t any other ghost hunters who still try to counter him,” their mother explained. “The GIW is banned from the town and the Red Huntress considers Phantom an ally.”

“Maybe she has a reason to?” Danny tried.

Maddie hesitated again. “I know that Phantom’s popular at Casper —”

“Because he saves the school like five times a week?” interjected Jazz.

“That’s exactly it,” said Maddie. “He has an obsession with heroics. We don’t know what he might do to give himself more opportunities to satisfy it.”

Jack frowned, as if for once he didn’t completely agree with Maddie. Danny studied him, curious. His dad had been the first one to suggest that superheroics were Phantom’s obsession and had always acted so passionately certain that he was right. Even Danny had believed him for a rough couple of days before Sam and Tucker had come up with enough evidence to the contrary.

“It’s not a hero-obsession,” Jazz insisted. “If it was, Phantom’s fights would’ve been getting more frequent and spectacular as he’s gotten stronger, not less. And he wouldn’t disappear almost every time people try to do something to celebrate him afterward!”

Jack turned to his attention to his daughter. “What do you think Phantom’s obsession is, Jazzerincess?”

“Guys, please,” Danny begged, “no ghost psychoanalysis at the table. You promised after that whole thing with Freakshow, Jazz.”

Jazz pursed her lips, and Danny panicked. “You promised!” he insisted. He did not need her yanking on his mental strings right in front of their parents, and he had spent enough time being studied already this week, thank you very much.

“Yeah, I did,” Jazz sighed. “Sorry, scaredy-pants; I forgot how much you hate talking about ghosts. Maybe we should talk about something else for a while?”

Danny stuck out his tongue at her, but in a grateful way.

Their dad pouted.

“Come on, Dad, you can manage to talk about something besides ghosts for a few minutes,” said Jazz. “Don’t you want to hear about the research projects I might get involved with next year?”

With a heroic effort, Jazz got them through the rest of the meal with barely a single additional mention of ghosts: she really could jabber on about psychology for hours when given the opportunity. Danny hoped she’d found her people in the research group she seemed increasingly determined to join. She deserved that.

Danny retreated to his room right after dinner, truthfully pleading exhaustion. Jazz followed after him as soon as their parents had gone back down to the lab.

“Danny?” Jazz knocked on his not-quite-closed door, pushing it ajar.

Danny sighed and beckoned her inside. She closed the door behind her and sat down in his desk chair. Mercifully, she didn’t start talking, just watched him stare at the constellations of glowing star stickers on his ceiling from where he lay flopped on his bed. The star stickers that he’d put up with his dad.

Danny sighed again. “I really don’t want to talk about it, Jazz,” he said tiredly. “You can call Sam if you want to know the details; she and Tuck already made me tell them everything over lunch.”

His sister accepted this with a nod. “Do you need to be somewhere else right now?” she asked him.

“Huh?” Danny turned his head. That hadn’t been the question he was expecting.

“Away from here,” Jazz clarified. “If it’s — if it’s too much. I can get you a hotel room for a few nights if you need, and talk to the Foleys in the meantime. I know they’d be happy to have you live with them for a while. Although Tucker would try to make you do all his chores for him,” she joked.

Danny wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or horrified that his sister had at some point developed a backup plan for if Danny couldn’t stay at Fentonworks. “It’s fine,” he told her. “It wasn’t all that bad. Having to sort through all of Tucker’s tangled cables would be way worse.”

“Really?”

Danny raised an eyebrow at Jazz. “What, weren’t you all gung-ho half an hour ago about how I should let them do it again?”

“You don’t have to,” Jazz was quick to reply. “I think it would be a great opportunity to improve their relationship with Phantom, and maybe even to get better information on your health, but — not if it makes you uncomfortable.”

“You really think that if I play lab rat for long enough in exchange for a ceasefire, they’ll get too used to not shooting at me to start again afterward?”

“In exchange for an alliance,” Jazz said softly.

Danny blinked. Then he stared. “There is no way they would go for that.”

“They would,” Jazz insisted. “Right now, they would.”

Danny shook his head. He’d been as polite as he could to his parents for almost two years as Phantom, had worked together with them a dozen times, and had once even gotten Valerie, in exchange for his covering three of her Nasty Burger shifts, to ask them as Red Huntress if they’d like to be cut in to her alliance with Phantom. His parents were as much ghost hunters as they were ghost scientists, if not more. They just weren’t going to go in for an alliance with a ghost.

“Danny,” Jazz needled, “when have I been wrong about which ghosts would ally with you?”

Grudgingly, he admitted, “You haven’t.”

“Exactly,” she said. “And I’ve been trying to figure out our parents for far longer than I’ve analyzed any ghost. If you press for an alliance with them now, they’ll give it to you. Did you see how quickly Dad agreed to talk with Phantom? He even asked my opinion about you, like he wasn’t sure his was right. And even Mom was wavering. You know she never wavers when her mind is set.”

Danny folded his arms and glared at the ceiling. He hated that Jazz had a point. And he hated how much he wanted to believe her, when everything he knew screamed that he shouldn’t, when the last time he’d trusted his parents as Phantom had ended with him locked in a containment chamber.

“And again, you don’t have to,” said Jazz. “I’m sorry I pushed so hard for it while you were sitting right there. It’s your choice. I just wanted to make sure that you’d have that choice.”

“Whole lot of ‘choice’ I’d have if I agreed, once they stick me into some scanner,” Danny muttered. He wasn’t altogether certain what an MRI machine would do to ectoplasm. Electricity did strange things to his ghost form, and magnets might be worse.

Jazz blinked. “Wait, have you never read a research subject consent form?”

“No?” he said. “When would I have done that?”

“When I was trying to get you to help me press our parents to modify their ethics guidelines? Or when I was tutoring you for the psychology unit in bio? Or when Tucker took you down to the university research center so you guys could earn some cash by taking surveys, and they handed you the forms to sign?”

“I didn’t read them!” Danny protested.

His sister groaned. “Well, if our parents ask Phantom to sign any forms, make sure you read them first,” she told him.

“Yeah, no duh!”

“Because,” Jazz went on, “any consent form even loosely based off of the APA’s Ethics Code will have a clause that you can back out at any time if you start to feel uncomfortable. And if the forms don’t have that clause, our parents shouldn’t be granted access to scanners used for human research at all.”

Danny closed his eyes. “Oh.”

He felt so tired. There was too much for him to think about right now even without the whole mess with his parents, and he had an early morning patrol tomorrow, then school afterward. And his head hadn’t stopped pounding since he’d woken up this afternoon.

“I’m gonna try and sleep,” he told Jazz.

Danny heard his sister stand up but didn’t open his eyes until she pressed a kiss to his forehead.

“Things will work out,” Jazz promised him, her voice soft. “You don’t have to agree to anything you don’t want to. I know that you’ve been saying ‘Once they know’ for almost a year now when you talk about the future, and I want to make sure you have the chance to tell them on your own terms, but if this isn’t the right way to reach that point, then it isn’t the right way.” She ruffled his hair. “I’ll be here for you no matter what.”

He was too tired to protest her treating him like a baby. And maybe he was too comforted by it to protest, anyway.

Jazz closed his bedroom door on her way out.

Chapter Text

“I don’t know about you, Maddie,” said Jack, “But I think we’re on the verge of a scientific breakthrough!”

Jack made a habit of optimism. Expecting good things to happen was much easier with practice, and noticing good things happening was much easier when you expected them. And even if his world felt like it had gone topsy-turvy since a ghost had curled up in his arms, good things were happening: they had more data than ever before on an ectobiological mechanism by which complex ghosts might formulate plans and had every possibility of getting yet more data. They’d already heard back from Jazz’s contacts at the local university’s neurological research center that she’d volunteered at last summer, expressing interest in running Phantom through some standard tests as long as the procedures involved satisfied their ethics review board. All they needed to do was convince Phantom to cooperate again, and Jack was certain that he’d landed on the perfect incentive.

There were less-good things happening, too, but he didn’t need to dwell on them. He didn’t need to dwell on the frightening possibility that the scientific evidence of a ghost’s having human-like neurons might spark the public to demand that ghost scientists give up on also being ghost hunters: that would either happen or it wouldn’t, and the Fentons would deal with it if and when it did. He didn’t need to dwell on the threat that he and Maddie could fall victim to the town’s conviction that Phantom meant well, only to find out too late that it had all been a deliberate ghostly trick: the Fentons would be cautious, and they would work with other researchers to help them retain some distance and objectivity. He didn’t need to dwell on the roiling guilt of realizing he had cut nerve fibers out of a being he hadn’t realized had nerves in the first place. He had to acknowledge it, and he had to do better, but he had to move forward, too. That was the only route open to him, the only route really open to anyone, in the end.

Maddie smiled. “Maybe,” she said, with more reservation than her husband. “Though Phantom’s still only one data point, and he may try not to help us.”

“He’ll help us.” Jack was sure of it. They could offer the ghost help with his obsession, the very thing holding him together. Phantom’s obsession wasn’t heroism: Jazz had made some good points against that theory last night, and anyway, that theory just didn’t fit with Phantom’s behavior while the ghost was close to spectral energy depletion. Jazz had posited “protection” instead when Jack had talked with her this morning once Danny had left to get breakfast with friends before school, but Jack didn’t think that wasn’t it, either. Jazz’s only interactions with the ghost were the ghost fights she occasionally got dragged into, after all; she might be a brilliant young woman, but she didn’t have much experience with Phantom and didn’t know enough about him.

Like the fact that he cried when reminded of “someone.”

There were other reasons that someone might go to great lengths to become well-known enough to draw people into visiting Amity Park in the hopes of seeing him, besides wanting popularity and recognition in and of itself. There were other reasons that a ghost might expend so, so much energy on maintaining an almost human form, and that of a teenager, besides mere conceit. There were other reasons that Phantom might make himself so easy to find for anyone who was really looking.

Speaking of which. “Warehouse district,” Maddie said from the navigator’s seat, pointing to a clash of blue against green up ahead.

Jack rolled the GAV windows down and slowed almost all the way to the speed limit in order to hear the confrontation.

“My domain will not be limited to mere ‘recycled’ packaging!” the blue ghost yelled as they drew near. “I am the Box Ghost —”

“Boxy, seriously,” Phantom interrupted, fending off a swarm of cardboard. “Talk to Technus, alright? His deal with the electronics recycling plant doesn’t mean that he’s not ‘master of all technology’ or whatever now, he just gets a nice steady stream of tech that was going to be thrown out anyway in exchange for —”

“The Box Ghost cannot be contained by a verbal agreement!” said the blue ghost, who, sure enough, did appear to be the overalled Cardboard Creep.

Phantom sighed as if profoundly weary. A steady stream of cardboard packages continued to assault him, and he dodged them without seeming to pay much attention. Well, he dodged most of them. A few struck, here and there.

Jack pulled over and parked, frowning. The Cardboard Creep didn’t usually cause Phantom this much trouble. Was the ghost boy still low on strength from being drained two nights ago?

“What about for, like, a week?” Phantom tried, still using words more than ectoblasts, Jack assumed for the sake of conserving his power. “Like not a permanent agreement, just a trial to see how many boxes you get that way as opposed to the way where you get your butt kicked every night?”

“You cannot defeat the Box Ghost!” shouted the Cardboard Creep, hurling a mass of bubble wrap at his weary opponent.

Jack jumped out of the GAV. What better way to broadcast good intentions than to help fight a common enemy? “Freeze, spook!” he yelled. He aimed the Fenton Bazooka up at the blue ghost and fired.

For once, his aim looked true, but it did him no good. Phantom finished phasing through the bubble wrap and threw up an ecto-shield so wide that it covered the Cardboard Creep as well. The shot from Jack’s Bazooka bounced off the shield and pulverized the roof of a warehouse instead.

Phantom grimaced. He uncapped his Fenton Thermos. “Looks like it’s time to pack it up, Boxy,” he said.

“The cylindrical container of dooooom!” yelled the Cardboard Creep. He tried to dodge backward, but Phantom moved faster, and the blue ghost was soon sucked inside. “Bewaaaaare!”

The ecto-shield didn’t disappear while Phantom screwed the Thermos lid back on and folded his arms towards the Fentons. Maintaining a shield that large for that long was a feat; so much for Phantom being low on power.

“Hi, Phantom!” Maddie called, stepping out of the GAV. “Do you have a moment?”

The ghost studied them for a few seconds more, focusing on their pointed-away weapons, before he finally dropped his shield. He floated down to sit on the edge of the nearest warehouse’s roof. “What’s up, Docs?”

Jack grinned at him. After seeing the ghost almost destabilize, and then cry, at their last meeting, it was a relief to see him back to his usual jokes and wary but friendly demeanor. Part of Jack’s topsy-turvy world felt righted again.

“We want to make a deal!” Maddie told the ghost.

“Yeah!” Jack seconded, then bit his tongue. They’d agreed that Maddie would do the negotiating, as Jack was, if it had to be put plainly, not the best negotiator.

Phantom perked up. “An alliance?”

“What? No,” Maddie answered. “We don’t ally with ghosts.”

“Ah.” Phantom slumped. “Knew I should’ve made a bet on that,” they heard him mutter to himself.

“There are a few more tests we’d like to run on you,” said Maddie.

“Uh huh,” said the ghost, unenthused. “And?”

“Will you cooperate?”

“What, for the fun of it?” asked Phantom, fingering his right arm. Jack winced. He still wasn’t sure exactly how to apologize for that.

“It wouldn’t be anything that would hurt you,” Maddie assured the ghost.

Phantom raised his eyebrows. “Did you explode that blob ghost last year on purpose? It seemed accidental.”

“What?” Maddie blinked twice. “It wasn’t on purpose — how did you know about that?”

“I keep an eye out for non-ghostly disasters around Amity, too, in case there’s anyone who needs help. The explosions in your lab are pretty noticeable,” Phantom explained.

Jack remembered Phantom rushing straight to their chemical cleanup supplies when the soaked absorption pad had caught fire, without needing to look for where the supplies were. Knowing immediately how to deal with a chemical explosion in the Fentons’ lab.

Maddie scowled. “Stay out of our lab.”

“Changed your mind about doing more tests on me, huh?” Phantom said, smiling. “No complaints here. You guys aren’t exactly experts on what won’t hurt ghosts, so I’d rather not risk it. Thanks for the chat: it was a nice change of pace from ectoblast dodgeball.” He stood up, all gangly teenage limbs and eerie spectral glow.

“Wait, Phantom!” Maddie said hurriedly, “If you help us with this, we’ll help you, too!”

Phantom paused, halfway crouched in preparation to take off. “Help me with what? I thought you said an alliance is off the table.”

“It is,” said Maddie.

“Then what —”

Unable to contain his excitement any longer, Jack called out, “We’ll help you find your family!”

The ghost fell off the roof in astonishment. He caught himself in the air a moment later, somersaulting in place a few times before he got control of the momentum imparted by his temporary obedience to gravity. “What?!”

“We’ll help you find where your living family is! Or else find out what happened to them!” Jack clarified. Phantom must be searching for them, after two years of constantly getting himself onto the news as a villain or as a hero had failed to bring them to him. Maybe he’d been searching for them that weekend, when the GIW had caught him outside of Amity Park. He must not remember much about his family, since ghosts’ memories from their living days were limited to the feelings at their time of death that sparked the formation of a ghost core, but he must have wanted them when he was dying and still want them now. He just couldn’t find them. Jack and Maddie could get him there, though, between their research skills and Phantom’s imprinted impressions of the people he’d left behind. They could bring the ghost boy back to his home and supervise the reunion to make sure no one came to harm. Perhaps it would even give Phantom enough peace to stop his haunting of Amity Park.

“I know where they are,” said Phantom in a strained voice.

Oh. Jack frowned. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure, yeah,” Phantom said, staring at Maddie and Jack. He paused. “Wait, are you telling me — did you kidnap someone you thought I was related to?”

“No, no!” Maddie told him. “We just thought you were trying to find them.”

“What made you think that?” the ghost demanded.

“You said you missed someone,” said Jack.

“… Oh.” Phantom’s shoulders fell. He looked tired, and so young, and so much like he had when he’d curled up in Jack’s arms two nights ago, drained of energy, only able to act on his most basic impulses. Only able to seek comfort.

As gently as he could manage — which may not have been very gently, considering the struggles he admittedly had with volume modulation — Jack said, “We remind you of your parents, don’t we?” He saw surprise register on Phantom’s face. “That’s why you mess up our names sometimes?” And why the ghost had acted like he trusted the Fentons to help him that night, of all people.

“Uh … yeah,” said Phantom. “Yeah, that’s definitely why.”

“Oh, Phantom,” sighed Maddie, looking distraught enough that Jack wondered if she had only just realized that that was why a random ghost they had no relation to almost called them “Mom” and “Dad” sometimes. They had discussed Jack’s theory that Phantom’s true obsession was reconnecting with his family last night, and she had agreed to try using that for negotiations with the ghost, but maybe she hadn’t really believed it until now. She hadn’t been the one who’d held the little ghost in her arms.

“Do you not get to see them very often?” Maddie asked, doing a better job of “gentle voice” than Jack had.

“No, I, uh, I see them around,” replied Phantom, gingerly rubbing the back of his neck. “Just, you know, keeping an eye out to make sure they’re okay, that’s all.”

“Do you talk with them?” asked Jack.

“Oh, man.” Phantom laughed, but there wasn’t much humor in it. “Wow. Uh, not … not as the ghost of their kid, no. I mean,” he gave even more mirthless chuckle, “who would want their kid’s ghost hanging around, right? I’m not, like, immediately recognizable like this, so I can just stay a stranger and spare everyone the trouble. Not a problem.”

“Why would you think that?” Maddie sounded genuinely grieved. Jack didn’t blame her. Phantom may only be the echo of a long-gone child, but the emotions that had formed his core were so recognizably human right now.

Jack suspected the claim of not wanting to disturb his family was a smokescreen, though. Maddie may have a good relationship with her parents, but Jack understood all too well how someone could dearly miss their family and still not want to interact with them. Phantom apparently remembered his family in some detail (perhaps there had been an unusually high concentration of ectoplasm around when his ghost core had formed, and the ectoplasmic imprint made at his death had been abnormally complex as a result?): he might well recall the bad as well as the good.

“Why would I think what?” Phantom asked Maddie.

“That your family wouldn’t want you around.”

The ghost stared at them. “I mean … the current opinion of the world’s leading ectoscientists,” he swept a hand in their direction, “is that ghosts are mindless, incomplete, often outright malevolent ectoplasmic imprints left behind by the dying. I don’t see why they’d believe any differently. I mean, would you want a ghost in your home, just because it came from your kid?”

“Of course,” said Maddie.

Phantom blinked. “Right,” he said dryly, “in your case, it’d be a free research specimen.”

“No —”

“Maddie,” Jack interrupted with a hand on her shoulder, feeling like he ought to stop this before it led to Phantom breaking down and crying again. “Not every family is … is worth it.”

“My family isn’t bad!” Phantom insisted in a rush. “They’re great, actually; I just — You know what? I’m done talking about this.” His voice flattened out, and he put his forehead in his hand. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. I won’t play lab rat just for family’s sake. Considering your guys’ track record, if you want me to consent to your tests, I’ll have to have a very good reason to believe you’re invested in making sure they don’t hurt me. If an alliance is out of the question, try being really careful and respectful of your research subjects for the next few years, and then we’ll see. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go dump the Box Ghost back in the Zone and see if I can get Skulker to keep him there this time.”

“Wait, Phantom!” Maddie called again. This time, the ghost didn’t obey. He shot into the sky like a rocket, his hair swept back by the wind and his legs vanishing into a long tail. In half a minute, he was too far away to make out anymore.

Jack turned away from squinting at the sky to find Maddie scribbling in her field notebook. She paused when she noticed him watching.

“That was the most complex interaction we’ve ever had with him,” Maddie said. “With any ghost. I think you were right about his family being part of his obsession, Jack, considering how much he talked about it. I just don’t understand …” She trailed off.

“Well! I guess family’s complicated when you’re a ghost,” said Jack, clapping his hands together. “We haven’t seen any other ghosts try to talk to their living family. Could be a ghost taboo.” He chuckled at the idea of ghosts having taboos. Maybe Phantom was complex enough for something like that, but he was clearly an outlier. More likely, if Phantom wasn’t lying about his family’s having been good to the boy that he’d come from, then visiting surviving relations was simply an unpleasant experience in general for ghosts. Ghosts were responsive to intense emotion, usually by being attracted to it, but grief might act on them in the opposite way.

Maddie bit her lip.

“What is it, Mads?” Jack asked.

“Do you think …” She hesitated. “If something awful were to happen to Jazz or Danny, and they left behind a ghost … Would that ghost avoid us?”

“Don’t worry about our kids, Mads; they know how to take care of themselves!” No ghost was a match for either of the Fenton children. Maddie had trained them both in karate since age four, and Jack made sure they knew how to use every new piece of Fenton ecto-weaponry.

“I know,” Maddie said, her voice warm with pride. “I know they’re alright. I’m just wondering, now.”

“Well, of course that ghost would come to us!” Jack told her. “Our kids know we love them no matter what! Even a ghost of one of them would know that, and they’d probably just obsess over psychology or space! We’d take care of ‘em; we’d just keep the Ghost Shield on to keep ‘em from getting out and causing any trouble.” That was what they’d planned to do the time that Jazz had started acting so strange in the month after their ghost portal had opened, when their sensors had kept claiming there was a ghost somewhere in Fentonworks, if they couldn’t get Jazz back the way she was before. Of course, there had turned out not to be anything ghostly involved with the changes in their daughter, and the counselor she’d dragged her parents to after that incident had made it very plain to them that any further misinterpretation of adolescent development as evidence of ghostly possession would be grounds for an investigation into whether Fentonworks was a suitable environment for children.

Maddie smiled in agreement. “I guess you’re right. I’ll finish my field notes if you go keep an eye on the GAV’s ghost scanner.”

“Sure thing, Mads. Think we’ll run into Phantom again tonight?”

“Maybe, if we stay out here for a while.”

“Shouldn’t we?” asked Jack. “He talked to us once; he might talk to us again. I can tell the kids dinner will be on their own.”

Maddie pursed her lips in thought, but she reached a decision quickly, like Jack had known she would. They were hot on the trail of scientific data, and if they went home now, all they would be able to think about was getting back out here. “Alright.”

Jack grinned at her and went back to the GAV. Its scanner was silent, showing no signs of ghost activity.

Jack called the house phone first to make sure he didn’t interrupt either of the kids. They would only answer that phone if they had a moment.

His son picked up on the third ring. “Hello? This is Fentonworks,” he answered, sounding slightly out of breath.

“Hey, Danno!” Jack boomed. “You doing your karate exercises?”

“Just, uh, cleaning the lab,” Danny answered. His usual chore.

“Attaboy,” said Jack. Danny didn’t reply. “Your mother and I will be out late tonight. Are you good for dinner on your own?”

“Are there a lot of ghosts out?” Danny asked, sounding puzzled.

“It’s been pretty quiet so far! We ran into Phantom fighting that Cardboard Creep, but he didn’t stay to talk long. We’re going to try to find him again!”

“To … talk more?”

“You bet! Never had a more fascinating interaction with a ghost. That crazy idea of Jazz’s might work out, would you believe it?”

“I guess I would,” Danny said slowly. “I’m … going to go over to Tucker’s now. I’ll let Jazz know about dinner.”

“Alright! Love you, Danno.”

Danny’s voice softened. “Love you too, Dad. See you later.”

… … …

Phantom was floating on his back several feet above the park fountain when the Fentons found him again. There didn’t seem to be any other ghosts around this time, and Jack left his Fenton Bazooka in the GAV when they parked, carrying only what weapons fit onto his utility belt.

The sky wasn’t yet dark enough for the park to be empty. A few people scowled as Jack and Maddie approached the town’s favorite ghost. At least they all retreated out of possible ectoblast range. Phantom looked up at the sound of the park-goers’ movement, caught sight of the Fentons, and waved in greeting.

“Hey, Phantom!” Jack called out. “Long time, no see!” That drew a smile out of the ghost, fortunately. “Any luck with Skulker?”

“Yes, actually,” Phantom answered, to Jack’s surprise. “Boxy shouldn’t show up here again at least until tomorrow.”

“How about that! How’d you manage it?”

The ghost shrugged. “Skulker and I have a deal, of sorts. If I tell him I’m having a bad week, he’ll leave me alone, even help out a little, as long as I don’t do it often and also send word when I’m in better shape for a fight. It’s only because he prefers hunting me when I’m not already worn out or distracted, but it’s better than nothing. I haven’t been able to get him to just schedule with me yet. Too counter to the spirit of hunting, apparently.”

Jack heard Maddie’s pen click open. “Why deal with him like that?” she asked, taking notes. “You’re strong enough to make him back off permanently, aren’t you?”

“What, and have him go after … after someone else like me instead? Pass,” Phantom said, shaking his head. His gaze was distant. “Besides, Skulker gets a lot of his tech from one of my worst enemies, so fighting with him keeps me updated on what new weapons I have to watch out for. And as long as I play his game, if I ever really need help with something, he tends to have my back. He’s a well-respected ghost in the Zone, so him helping convinces a bunch of other ghosts to help, too.”

Maddie’s pen scribbled furiously. Phantom’s perspective on his interactions with other ghosts was likely to be as much fabricated by his own unusually complex mind as it was real, but it was still fascinating data.

“He helped me the last time the GIW came to town before they were banned, actually,” Phantom continued. “He got Technus to help, too, which was really useful. I don’t think I could’ve gotten everyone out of the building safely and held them off by myself, by that point. He also led a whole group of ghosts against the army at Pariah’s Keep when I had to get inside. And there was this one time with Walker … Anyway. The guy’s annoying as getting gum on your shoe, and as obsessed with hunting as you are with breaking ghosts down into component molecules, but I don’t hate him.”

Jack wondered if he should feel offended by the comparison. The “don’t hate” bit felt promising, at least.

Phantom waited patiently for Maddie to finish writing.

“Is there something specific you want to discuss?” the ghost asked when Maddie looked up. “Not that I have a problem with just talking in general; talking’s nice.”

Maddie pursed her lips, possibly to hold back a comment about how Phantom likely used conversation as a tactic to get people’s guards down.

“How much do you remember about your family from before you died?” Jack asked into the silence.

“Except about that topic,” the ghost muttered. He fell still, then, and fixed his eyes on Jack’s face for so long that Jack had to look away. “… Why do you want to know about that so badly?”

“It’s verifiable data,” Jack told him. About your abnormally complicated obsession, he managed not to add aloud. He’d decided before they’d found Phantom again that he wouldn’t phrase it like that. Information about the obsession of one of the most powerful ghosts they’d encountered was important, but if they approached the subject too directly, Phantom would probably fly off again. Or we’ll make him cry again … Jack pulled his thoughts back to the present. “Something we can check against existing records. We don’t have a lot of data yet on how much of their lives ghosts remember.”

“Oh.” Phantom relaxed and scratched his head. “Well … hm. I don’t want to talk about that, but if you just want to interview some ghost about what they remember from their life, I might be able to find a taker. No promises, but I can ask.”

Huh. “Would that work? For ghosts besides you?” Jack asked.

Phantom rolled his eyes. “Some ghosts really enjoy talking about themselves. I mean, I’d have to offer something in exchange, but it may not have to be much.”

“What are you getting out of this conversation?” Maddie asked, eyebrows furrowed.

“Hm?” Phantom’s eyebrows furrowed in such an exact echo of Maddie’s that Jack had to wonder if the ghost had learned that expression from watching her.

“If ghosts talk to people in exchange for something,” said Maddie. “Why are you talking to us? What are you expecting?”

Phantom’s lips thinned. “In the case of an interview with you, the payment would be for willingly sitting in a room with you for like an hour, not for the talking,” he said. “Ghosts talk all the time, but you aren’t exactly popular conversation partners.”

“You’re talking to us.”

“Best alternative to fighting I’ve found yet. Even if it doesn’t always work on the Box Ghost.”

Maddie frowned at that explanation.

“Speaking of alternatives!” Jack piped up. “We were wondering if you would, ah …” He tried to remember the phrasing that he and Maddie had decided on when they’d discussed this in the GAV. “Accept a half-alliance in return for helping with our research?” Some agreement where they would only be obligated to help him under certain, specific conditions, and could get information in return.

Phantom blinked at them several times. Then he burst out laughing so hard he had to clutch his stomach.

Jack was inclined to take that as a “no,” but after a moment, Phantom managed to get out, “Man, I do everything by halves.” He sobered a little but continued smiling. “What did you, uh, have in mind?” he asked, not uninvitingly.

It was Maddie who spoke up. “We aren’t about to agree to help you unconditionally —”

“Well, yeah, of course not,” said Phantom, not sounding the least bit put out.

Maddie and Jack stared at him.

Phantom held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Sorry. I’ll stop interrupting.”

Maddie nodded slowly. “Well.” She gestured for Jack to take out the Fenton Tape Recorder from his supply belt. He held it up.

Phantom drifted back, then appeared to realize what Jack was holding. He returned to hovering over the center of the fountain and gave them a thumbs-up.

Jack turned the recorder on while Maddie flipped her notebook to a new page. Whether or not they reached any agreement, this experience was bound to be scientifically fascinating.

“First and foremost,” Maddie told the ghost, “we would want a complete list of your abilities, and to be able to test their strength.”

Phantom nodded agreeably.

“And to be notified any time you come across another ghost in Amity Park,” she continued. Really, they wanted to be able to keep tabs on Phantom at all times, but Jack had been sure the little Houdini of a ghost wouldn’t allow that, so Maddie had agreed to start smaller. This would at least give the Fentons a much more complete picture of the ghost activity in Amity Park and get them to the scene faster when a ghost fight was about to happen.

Phantom nodded again.

“And to have a guarantee that you’ll respect an off-limits workspace for Jack and me.”

Phantom nodded again, then held up a hand.

“Yes?” said Maddie.

“Can we discuss those three before moving on?”

“Sure!” said Jack. Watching a ghost attempt negotiation was going to be interesting.

“Thanks,” said Phantom, favoring him with a distracted smile. He settled himself into a cross-legged position inches above the peak of the fountain’s spray and began ticking off his fingers. “Right. For my abilities: sure, as long as we stick to ghostly abilities and as long as you agree not to share information about them without my permission. I don’t want to spend all day writing down stuff like ‘I have a good sense of direction’ and ‘I’m good at physics’ that doesn’t have anything to do with being a ghost, and I don’t want the whole town to know absolutely everything I can do. For ghost notifications: again, sure, as long as you then leave us alone if I tell you to. Not every interaction between ghosts is a fight, and not every fight would benefit from your involvement, and if I’m on the scene first, then I’m the one who gets to make that call. For the off-limits workspace: it can’t be all of Fentonworks. That’s where your portal is, and it’s a frequent disaster scene. You can pick some portion of it away from the portal or else some space outside it, but if you’re running tests there, you need to agree to contract a trained safety supervisor and also not let any minors into the space, because I won’t be able to do anything if something blows up there.”

The Fentons gaped at him. Those were not conditions they’d been expecting. Those weren’t even conditions that they’d imagined a ghost could be complex enough to think up on the spot.

Phantom smirked back. “And if you’re planning to develop countermeasures for my ghost powers in this private workspace, you should really talk to Huntress. She already has countermeasures for a lot of them, and you may be able to come up with ways to test them without my finding out all the details if you work together. We’re having a hard time of that at the moment.”

“Wait, you and the Red Huntress work out plans for how to take you out?” Jack blurted. Maddie appeared to still be processing.

Phantom shrugged. “Red does. It’d be kinda counterproductive if I helped make those plans. She gets to test them on me, though, as long as she makes sure everything has a working emergency release system first, in case it hurts.”

“I,” Maddie stuttered, blinking. “What.” That was a far more permissive alliance between Huntress and Phantom than either he or Maddie, Jack suspected, had ever imagined.

Phantom flipped onto his stomach. “Don’t tell Red you thought she was such a poor negotiator that she didn’t put clauses like that into our alliance agreement. She takes offense easily.” He folded his arms in front of himself and rested his chin on them, like he was lying on grass rather than air, and grinned at the stunned scientists.

The ghost probably wasn’t lying, since the Fentons easily could — and would — flag down the Red Huntress in the coming days to confirm what he’d said, and he seemed to expect that. Jack would make sure that all three of them were wearing Specter Deflectors for that conversation to eliminate the possibility of overshadowing.

“So, you would …” said Maddie, “you would agree to that with us, too?”

Phantom unfolded his arms to better gesticulate. “As long as you uphold my terms, yes. Although in your case, I’d want to see evidence of your devices’ emergency releases working before you try them on me. You don’t always test things properly before using them.”

Jack frowned at the insult to their testing procedures. Phantom caught his expression, but he seemed to misinterpret its cause.

“Half the point of having human allies is to have people who know me well enough to be able to tell if I’m being mind-controlled or got replaced by an alternate timeline doppelgänger or whatever the next not-myself nonsense is, and then do something about it before I hurt anyone,” said Phantom.

“Wait,” said Maddie. “‘Allies,’ plural? As in more than one?”

The ghost crossed his arms again. “I’m not telling you who the others are, so don’t ask.”

“Red Huntress,” said Jack.

Phantom nodded. “Announcing that alliance publicly was Red’s idea. She’d already made herself a target in her own right, much like you guys, so all the announcement did was tell anyone who would come after her anyway that they would have to deal with both of us. That’s not the case for everyone.” He paused. “And it was sort of Red’s way of apologizing, too,” he added more softly. “I mean, some of the stuff she’d hit me with hurt. The announcement at least shifted public opinion my way a little.”

Phantom didn’t look at them as he said it, but the hint was unsubtle enough that Jack caught it anyway. You owe me just as much of an apology.

“I’m sorry,” Jack told him.

“Yeah?” Phantom replied, with just a hint of a challenge. Do you mean it?

Jack glanced at Maddie for support, but she was busy writing in her notebook.

Jack swallowed. “What, uh. What are your terms?”

Maddie looked up.

Phantom flipped into a seated position. He turned his eyes away for a moment, reaching down to let the fountain’s spray pass intangibly through his hand, and breathed deep.

“One,” said Phantom, “communication. We check in with each other at least once a week, and we listen to each other when we do, respectfully. We set up a way of alerting each other if we need help that we all promise to pay attention to. We don’t have to tell each other everything, or anything like that, but if anything big happens — some major change or new threat cropping up — we’ll let each other know.

“Two. Figure out a way to make your regular weapons not target me. Until you’ve done that, don’t fire them whenever I’m around unless I’ve already been taken out or I tell you it’s okay. I’m not going to aim at you unless I think you’re overshadowed, and we can come up with some signal to check whether that’s the case. And if I tell you to stop doing something because it’s uncomfortable or it hurts, then stop. In a fight or in a lab.

“Three. Just …” Phantom paused and looked back down at the water. He swallowed. “Just, assume good intentions, okay? I know I screw up sometimes. Don’t try to pretend you never do. Just, trust me until I give you a new reason not to. That’s what you’re asking from me, with this.”

The ghost fell silent. Jack and Maddie glanced at each other. Phantom’s first demand was a great idea; the second was disquieting, but nothing they hadn’t expected; and the third was … going to change everything.

Maddie cleared her throat uncomfortably. “Are there more?”

Phantom shrugged. “Those are the main ones,” he said. “The rest is details. I don’t have the energy for details tonight.”

Relief flooded through Jack. Phantom didn’t expect an answer right away. Maddie and Jack could go home, play back the recording, and work through their thoughts.

“How long did you spend negotiating with Huntress?” Jack asked.

“‘Bout three days,” Phantom answered. “We had a lot of misunderstandings to clear up. Feel free to take all week, though. Or more. I’m definitely not going to be up for more of your tests until next week anyway.”

“Are they more tiring than fights?” Maddie asked in confusion.

“They’re more terrifying than fights,” Phantom told them. “Ghosts practically never destroy each other.”

Phantom’s voice from two nights ago echoed through Jack’s mind. “Wasn’t two nightmare scenarios enough for one night?” Almost destroyed by whatever the GIW had done to him, and then by the collar, and then fallen into the hands of a pair of ectoscientists not known for the long-term preservation of their research subjects. Oh.

Phantom curling up in Jack’s arms in relief after the collar came off, expecting the night’s horrors to finally be over. Oh.

The sound of Maddie’s pen tapping against her chin drew Jack out of his thoughts.

To Phantom, Maddie said, “Your deal with Skulker is that he’ll leave you be or help you if you tell him you’re having a bad week.”

“Yeah,” said the ghost.

“You told him you’re having a bad week.”

Oh.

“Yeah.”

Maddie hesitated. “I’m …” she offered. “I’m sorry it’s been so rough.”

It was more a social nicety than an apology, but Phantom accepted it with good grace. He gave her a polite smile and said, “Eh, I’ve had worse. Haven’t died this week.”

Jack choked on the unexpected laugh before it finally found its way out of his throat.

Phantom smiled more genuinely at Jack’s laughter. “If anyone ever tells you they’ll sleep after they’re dead,” he added, “don’t believe them. Being a ghost is exhausting.”

Maddie smiled fondly. “Our son tells us that all the time.”

“Well, your son’s lying to you.”

The reminder of their children made Jack jolt. “Maddie,” he said. She blinked at him. “It’s almost the kids’ curfew time. We should get home!”

“Oh, right.” Maddie looked back to the fountain. “We have to go. We’ll see you later, Phantom.”

Phantom grinned and, of all things, pointed finger guns at them. “Sure will,” he agreed, and immediately vanished.

Jack laughed again. He clicked off the Fenton Tape Recorder.

It took Maddie a moment longer to get the joke. “Oh,” she groaned, “I handed that one right to him.”

“It was a good one, Maddie!”

“I suppose so.” She smiled in acknowledgement as they turned back towards the GAV.

They didn’t talk about it until they were back on the road. Half of the people who’d been at the park when they’d arrived were still there when they left, watching them. How much the onlookers had overheard, Jack didn’t know. His words had probably been heard, at least. He wondered if Phantom had expected the Fentons to track him down for another conversation tonight and had gone to the park on purpose, in order to have witnesses to any agreement they made. Jack wouldn’t have expected that level of foresight from a ghost before tonight, but Phantom was a constant surprise.

The main road drew near. Jack managed to merge onto it without sideswiping any other cars. They drove on in silence.

“Mads,” Jack said a minute later.

He didn’t have to say the rest. “I know,” Maddie replied. “I just … I don’t know. He asked for a lot.”

“He offered a lot, too.”

“That’s true.” She stared out the side window. “Trust a ghost,” she murmured.

Jack scratched his chin. “Maddie … if we keep studying him and turn up more data that’s anything like what we’ve gotten so far, I think we’re gonna end up soft on him whether we get anything in return for it or not.”

Human-like cells. Human-like reasoning. Human-like relationships with ghosts and ghost hunters alike.

Maddie pursed her lips. “I think you’re right,” she agreed. She sighed. “The only alternative is for us to stop studying him altogether.”

“We’re ghost scientists, Maddie! We can’t do that!”

“I know we can’t. I’m just worried, Jack. I’m worried, because I want to trust him now. We’ve seen what ghosts can do when they’re left unchecked. We’ve seen what he can do. What happens if we trust him, and he uses that trust to hurt us? To hurt our family?”

“I don’t know,” Jack admitted. He should be worried about that, he knew. Well, more worried. He would be more worried, if he didn’t … if he hadn’t already started thinking of Phantom as an ally somewhere along the way.

Was Jack only pushing forward with this alliance idea because some part of him thought it was too late to turn back now?

“Maybe we can get someone who doesn’t like Phantom to look at what we’re doing,” Jack suggested. Showing your data to someone who didn’t agree with your hypothesis was a good check against biased data analysis, and he couldn’t think of many other countermeasures.

Maddie smiled. “A true scientist’s approach.”

The rest of the trip home passed in silence, each of them lost in their thoughts.

Both of their kids were home and in the kitchen when they arrived. Danny was barely holding his head up above his homework and a bowl of microwave mac and cheese; Jazz was reading a book and occasionally pinching him awake.

“Mom! Dad!” their daughter exclaimed when she caught sight of them in the entryway. “Did you find Phantom? Did you talk about an agreement?”

“We did!” Jack told her with a grin as Danny turned his head towards them in greeting.

Jazz beamed at her parents. “Do you have an alliance now?”

Trust Jazz to have psychoanalyzed a ghost enough to guess right away that that ghost would have asked the Fentons for an alliance. Maybe the two of them should listen to Jazz’s theories about ghosts more often. Both of their children’s gazes bored into them as they waited for an answer, Jazz’s eager in the way it always was when she was on the verge of confirming a theory, Danny’s tired but almost eerily focused.

Jack looked to his wife.

Maddie hesitated, but then, slowly, she nodded. “Yes,” she said, and despite all the misgivings she’d mentioned in the GAV, a small smile appeared on her face. “I believe we do.”

Chapter Text

“Well, I think it’s great that they want to know about Phantom’s family relationships,” said Jazz. “It means they’re actually thinking about ghosts having complex social bonds.”

Danny groaned. “Couldn’t they have picked literally anything else to focus on?”

His sister looked down at him. He was lying face-up on her rug because the floor seemed like the most comfortable place to be right now. She was sitting in her desk chair, legs crossed at the knee and fingers interwoven on top of them, like a therapist. Jasmine Fenton, the world’s first ghost family counselor.

“It’s like Dad thinks working things out with my family is my obsession, now,” Danny whined, covering his face with his arms. And what if Dad was right; what if that’s why this whole thing made him feel like someone had taken a power scrubber to his insides?

“It’s not,” Jazz told him confidently. “It’s just a completely normal human-half desire. Do you need me to get Sam and Tucker’s evidence folder on your obsession being protection —?”

“No, I do not.” Being shown that folder the first time had been one of the most embarrassing experiences he’d ever gone through as Phantom. He didn’t know why: practically every ghost he’d met was thrilled for other people to know about their main obsession. Jazz thought it was because Danny hadn’t yet fully reconciled himself to being half-ghost, which Danny would have dismissed as nonsense had Clockwork not told him the same thing.

“Alright,” Jazz relented. Danny peeked up to see her studying him with a frown. “Is that what’s really eating at you? Having to talk to our parents about … our parents?”

Danny hesitated. He’d already gotten three opinions today on whether he should resolve the whole situation with his parents by just telling them now, and he wasn’t sure a fourth opinion would break the stalemate. Sam thought he should never tell his parents if he could avoid it because then they’d just get in the way of things; Valerie thought he should tell his parents right away, before they had a chance to do any research tests they might regret; and Tucker thought the Fentons trying to make sense of Phantom’s relationship with his living relatives was the setup for the world’s best joke and Danny should wait to tell them until he was presented with the funniest possible moment to break the news.

“I’m just,” Danny finally admitted. “I’m … I’m scared, Jazz.” So much so that he was barely sleeping even when he did make time for rest.

Jazz nodded sympathetically.

Danny swallowed. “What if I agree all formally to trust them and then they still hurt me? I mean, what if they use the fact that I’m trusting them to … to …”

He knew he could get out of almost any trap his parents could devise, and he knew Jazz or Tucker or Sam or even Valerie would get him free if he couldn’t. He wasn’t worried about that. He just hadn’t realized before two night ago how much it would hurt for his parents to use his trust in them against him, even if he could get away. His right arm still tingled from his parents’ sampling, and despite the fact that the sensation was clearly psychosomatic by this point, he couldn’t make it stop.

Jazz said, sadly, “I think you just have to decide whether it’s worth the risk, Danny. It’s okay if you decide it isn’t.”

“I want the risk to go away.” He glared up at the windowpane shadows on the ceiling.

Jazz swept her hair back over her shoulders. “Well, if you find the Master of Risk ghost or whatever and convince them to help, let me know,” she said.

Danny sighed. His neck was starting to ache from the extended floor time. Jazz’s carpet was plush, but it was still a far cry from a pillow. “Honestly? I might look.”

“It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to spend some time in the Ghost Zone, at that,” Jazz said so quickly that Danny wondered whether her crack about the almost certainly nonexistent Master of Risk had been a deliberate attempt to steer him in that direction. “It’s good for your ghost half. Valerie and I can cover patrol tonight.”

Yeah, that had definitely been deliberate. “I still have an essay to write,” Danny reminded her.

Jazz pursed her lips. “You know Lancer would give you a longer extension if you told him what’s really going on.”

“Jazz, I am not letting Lancer know before my parents do.” He’d already run through every other vaguely plausible excuse for needing an extension, unfortunately.

“He’d keep the secret, though,” his sister pressed. “I know you know he sponsors the GSA. He keeps lots of students’ secrets, and he just wants you to succeed.” Danny didn’t know why Jazz was so keen on this. Probably, she was hoping to spearhead some kind of ghost inclusiveness program at Casper as a last-minute senior project.

Or possibly she was annoying him on purpose in order to drive him into the Zone for the sake of his ghost health. “Fine, fine,” he grumbled.

Jazz brightened. “You’ll tell him? That’s great; we can finally get you actual accommodations —”

“No, I’ll go to the Ghost Zone,” Danny clarified. “Tell Mom and Dad I went out with Sam.” He’d rather go out with Sam, but she did the practice hours for her EMT certification on Tuesdays. Oh, well. Maybe Danny could spend his time in the Zone finding someone for his parents to interview about their memories like he’d said he would, thereby shifting some of their attention off of Phantom. Hopefully.

“Okay.” Jazz waved to him as he sank through her floor. “Have a good time!”

… … …

Danny grabbed his Fenton Phone on the way to the portal. Getting into the Ghost Zone was easy, because the portal’s door had, in a rare instance of safety consideration on the part of his parents, been made of some kind of ghostly diode that allowed ghosts through in one direction and humans through in the other even when the door itself was shut. Getting back out of the Ghost Zone was trickier, because he had to shift human and stop using ghost powers to get through the door from the Ghost Zone side, which meant he would be visible while doing so. Jazz would need to let him know using the Fenton Phones whether the coast was clear.

Danny passed invisibly through the portal, and the Ghost Zone stretched out to meet him.

Being inside the Zone felt … nice. The saturation of ectoplasm and spectral energy here meant that he could stay in ghost form for as long as he pleased without needing to worry about passively losing energy faster than he could replace it. Spectral energy was always radiating off of his ghost form, but in the Zone he absorbed it just as quickly as he gave it off. Although he didn’t physically need the Zone the way most ghosts did, he could genuinely relax as Phantom here, and his friends were convinced that was important for his mental stability and the development of his powers.

They might not be wrong. Most of the times he’d first gained mastery over a new power had happened inside the Ghost Zone, and he definitely felt less anxious now, drifting through the green and black swirls, than he had for days. Though the ease-up of anxiety could just be because his parents weren’t likely to come here.

Danny was already regretting the agreement to let his parents test power-disabling devices on him, and they hadn’t even formalized that agreement or done anything yet. He’d replayed their negotiations over and over in his mind since last night. He knew he wouldn’t really have changed that part — the first time that he’d been mind-controlled, Sam had nearly died, and he hadn’t been half as strong then as he was now; knowing that his allies really could stop him if they ever needed to would be a tremendous relief — but reaching that point was … not going to be a fun process.

The area of the Ghost Zone near his parents’ portal that was dense with purple doors passed behind him. He picked up speed in the emptier space. No need to go about any specific tasks yet. He could just fly, just be a ghost and fly, ectoplasm trailing through his fingers like wind, every Real World concern left behind for a time.

Danny closed his eyes and smiled. Yeah, Jazz had been right: he’d needed this. The open space, the sharp but sweet scent of fresh ectoplasm, the buzz of spectral energy, the strum of an electric guitar —

Aw, crud. Danny slowed to a halt at the sound, opened his eyes, and flipped to a standing position.

“Hey, Babypop!” Ember called to him. She was floating slowly towards him while idly plucking her guitar. Danny eyed the instrument in suspicion, but none of its hypnosis settings were turned on. A confrontation was unlikely, then. She must be looking for him, or at least for someone, since she was far from her lair, but maybe she just wanted news.

“Hey, Ember,” Danny replied, uninvitingly. He folded his arms.

“Don’t be like that,” Ember pouted. “I just want to know if anything big happened.”

Danny frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Skulker said you’d had a bad week, but you didn’t tell him why.”

“Oh.” Alright, that was sort of fair. A lot of his bad weeks did involve something big going down in Amity Park or in the Zone, and while Danny wouldn’t call Ember a friend, she had helped him out on a few of those occasions.

Danny uncrossed his arms. “I don’t think it’s anything you have to worry about,” he told her. “It was mostly just a bad run-in with the Guys in White well outside of Amity Park.”

“The guys in what?”

“Guys in White,” Danny repeated. “Ghost Investigation Ward, or whatever they’re actually called. Those government guys in sunglasses who wrecked the museum last time.” Ember had been one of the ghosts who’d fought them off.

Ember wrinkled her nose. “Oh, those creeps. What did they want now?”

“Me.” He forced a grin. “I’m just too much of a catch.”

“As if. You’re a dork, Babypop,” she scoffed.

“Yeah, yeah.” It was amazing how little Danny cared about random insults from ghosts these days. Most insults didn’t land anymore, the way they had back when he was starting out. He had a lot of victories under his belt now, a good sense for what he was doing, general public approval, and a girlfriend who loved him, even if she did keep dragging him to goth rock revival shows that threatened to bore him the rest of the way to death. At least Sam didn’t seem to mind that he came along only to see her enjoying herself.

Ember strummed out a few chords. Danny thought she would leave, now that she had her answer, but instead she asked him, “You still good for the concert this weekend?”

Danny blinked. Was Ember … actually offering to let him off the hook for the next of the biweekly concerts that he ran for her in exchange for her promise not to hypnotize people? Just because he wasn’t feeling great? That was … unexpected.

“Uh,” Danny replied. “Wow. Thanks, but, I should be able to do it.” He knew how much Ember got out of those concerts, and he’d feel guilty about not keeping his word to her, even if she told him it was alright. He grinned at her more easily. “I always get a good nap in during your set.”

“Your friends still haven’t taught you how to appreciate decent music, huh?” Ember fired back, her shoulders relaxing.

“Sure they have. We saw Dumpty Humpty just last month.”

“I rest my case,” said Ember.

“Hey, they’ve got a good sound!”

“If you have the most basic taste in the Infinite Realms, maybe. You sure you didn’t die of being too boring, Babypop?”

“Half-die,” Danny corrected her, smiling.

“Eh, whatever. I’ll see you Saturday.”

Inspiration struck Danny. Ember wasn’t the easiest ghost to talk with, but she did remember at least her name from her life, and she was usually open to making deals. “Hey, wait,” he called as she turned to fly off.

Ember glanced back. “Yeah?”

“Would you do an interview in exchange for an extra concert? A science interview,” Danny clarified when Ember’s expression briefly lit up. “Like, a research thing where you get asked questions about being a ghost.”

“What, you trying to get all rigorous about what makes halfas different from full ghosts now?” Ember asked with a derisive snort.

“No,” Danny answered. “I don’t care. My — the Fentons are just getting a bit less dissection-y in their approach to ectoscience, finally. They want to see what they can learn by talking to ghosts.” He hoped the plural wasn’t an exaggeration, that he wasn’t the only ghost his parents were now willing to talk to. If they seemed too trigger-happy about the prospective interview, he would call it off.

“Who? Oh, your folks.”

Danny grimaced. It was a little annoying that pretty much every ghost who’d been to Amity Park knew his identity.

Ember grinned. “Too much of a goody-two-shoes to pass up any chance to make Mommy and Daddy happy, huh?”

“It’ll make things better for everyone if I can get them to start talking first instead of just firing at every ghost they see!” Danny protested, feeling his face flush green.

Ember’s grin widened. “Oh, sure, that’s the only reason you’re trying to help them. It doesn’t have anything to do with hoping your parents will say you’re such a sweet, helpful little ghost.”

“I’m not!” Danny said, and yeah, that was a weak retort. He tried to think of literally anything better but blanked. “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to!”

Ember was outright laughing at him now. “Oh, no, I’ll definitely do it,” she told him. “Extra concert in exchange? How long of a concert?”

“Like forty minutes, and all the normal rules apply.”

Ember snorted. “No. Same length as the interview.”

“Fine, an hour.”

“So short?”

“Honestly, you’re probably going to be fed up with them by then,” Danny said. “They’re not exactly tactful.”

Ember paused, considering. “I don’t have to answer all of their questions, do I?”

Danny shook his head. “You can sit there in silence for an hour for all I care,” he told her. “Just don’t start a fight with them and don’t tell them who I am. If they try to do anything to you, I’ll break it up.”

“Oh, you’ll be there. Good. It’s a deal.”

Ember smirked, and Danny tried to shake off the feeling that he’d just made a terrible mistake.

… … …

This essay was never getting done.

Danny was at least not missing class at the moment — there hadn’t been a ghost attack during school all of Tuesday or Wednesday — but this thing with his parents was taking up practically all of his time outside of school. When he’d approached his parents last night to actually set up a time for the interview with Ember, they’d handed him a first draft of an alliance agreement that he’d then spent all evening going over with Jazz and had asked to do the Ember interview as soon as possible. “As soon as possible” had turned out to be “tomorrow,” when Danny had asked Ember’s usual concert venue when they had an opening.

So Wednesday afternoon was a rush to put up posters around town advertising the last-minute concert, go over the alliance agreement revisions that he’d worked out with Jazz one final time, fetch Ember, and then fetch his parents. Once the four of them were together backstage at the concert venue, it would be almost three more hours before he could go home and finish his essay. Maybe he could tell Lancer that ectoplasm had brought his computer to life and he’d had to slay it without being able to back up his essay file first.

His dad parked the GAV straddling two spaces in the parking lot Danny had led them to. Danny drifted down until he was standing on asphalt. He would lead them the rest of the way on foot.

“Oh, honey, look!” Danny’s mom said to his dad as they both stepped out of the GAV. “It’s the same place that hosts our 80’s parties! Who knew they did ghost concerts?”

Trust Jack and Maddie Fenton to not have noticed the advertised concerts by one of Amity Park’s most famous ghosts taking place at regular intervals at a venue that had purchased a large order of Specter Deflectors from them, until they were literally led to the door. Well, Danny wasn’t about to complain about his parents’ obliviousness to obvious ghost activity.

“Ember said she’d meet us backstage,” Danny told them. He rubbed his eyes as he turned toward the door.

A heavy hand fell on Danny’s shoulder, and a shock coursed through him. He yelped. The hand let go.

Danny aimed a glare over his shoulder at his dad. “Do you really need to check that your Specter Deflectors are working by doing that?”

“Oh,” said Jack, like he’d forgotten he was wearing a Specter Deflector. That honestly might have been the case. “Er, sorry about that. You doing okay, Phantom? You look, uh … We’ve got some ecto-dejecto in the GAV, if you need it!”

Danny’s shoulders relaxed. He was fairly certain that his mom was only playing along with this allies thing — well, soon-to-be allies thing, depending on how many more rounds of revision their agreement went through — mainly for the sake of scientific curiosity, but his dad seemed serious about it.

“Thanks, but I don’t think it’d help much,” Danny answered, lured into honesty. “I’m not unstable, just low on sleep.”

“Ghosts sleep?” his mom asked, catching up to them.

“When we get enough time to.”

“Fascinating.” Maddie jotted down a note, probably about another study she wanted to run on him, oh joy.

They didn’t hear a hint of music until they were within six feet of the door. Danny had made sure this place was well-soundproofed before he’d talked to them about hosting Ember concerts. Ember mostly made good on her promise not to hypnotize people, but concerts were when she was most likely to get carried away, and Danny didn’t want any hypnotic music drifting out to listeners who hadn’t submitted to the concertgoer rules of “Lock up all recording devices and keep a Specter Deflector on throughout the show.”

The back door was locked. Danny tossed the key that he’d been given to his dad, who led them through; he’d doubted his parents would want to be phased inside, and the Specter Deflectors would have made that difficult anyway.

Ember was perched on a makeup station table inside, apparently working on a new song. She stopped when they came in and rested her hands atop the body of her guitar. “Hey, Fentons,” she greeted the three of them with a grin. At Danny’s glare, she grinned wider and added, “… and Babypop.”

“‘Babypop?’” asked Maddie.

“It’s what I call him,” Ember explained, jerking a thumb in Danny’s direction.

Danny’s mother frowned. “Why?”

“Well, I’m not calling him ‘Phantom,’ that’s stupid,” Ember snorted.

“Hey!” said Danny.

Ember raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him. “Your jokes are dumb, Babypop. Get a better coping mechanism, like decent music.”

“You wouldn’t know anything about decent music,” Danny fired back.

Maddie wrote frantically in her field notebook while Jack, fingers twitching towards the weapons holstered on his belt, said, “I, uh, thought there wasn’t going to be a fight?”

Ember blinked at him.

“We’re not fighting,” Danny explained. “This is just how we always talk.”

“Yeah,” Ember agreed. She smacked a fist into the palm of her other hand. “If this were a fight, he’d be on the ground already.”

“Taking a nice nap with the Thermos you would be in as a pillow, yeah. And celebrating your new fighting title of no-hit wonder.”

“Ha!” said Jack.

Danny smiled. It was nice to have an appreciative audience for his puns.

Ember glanced back and forth between them. “Oh, no, you two have the same sense of humor, don’t you?” she said. “That’s embarrassing for you, Babypop.”

“Not as embarrassing as the time you tried to rhyme your name with ‘tender.’ Shouldn’t we get started?” Danny asked pointedly, since they might otherwise spend the whole hour trading insults. As entertaining as that would be, it wasn’t the purpose of the meeting.

“Yeah, yeah,” Ember acquiesced. “Here, Babypop, I got you a fancy chaperone chair.” She pointed at a toddler high chair that she must have dragged in from the attached restaurant.

“How kind,” Danny deadpanned, grabbing one of the makeup station chairs instead.

His parents remained standing.

Danny frowned at them. “Sit down,” he said, firm. “Ember and I are sitting, and like you just said, this isn’t a fight.”

They sat, if with obvious reluctance. Jack took out his recorder.

“What’s that?” Ember asked.

“The Fenton Tape Recorder!” Jack proudly announced.

“An otherwise normal tape recorder with an ectophobic coating and a sticker of his face on it,” Danny explained.

“Ohhh,” said Ember, “so that’s why I had to promise not to play anything for ‘em.”

That, and I wanted to spare their ears, Danny managed not to say. He’d only just gotten the banter to stop.

Maddie looked up from her notebook and frowned. “Why?”

“Ember has a bad habit of sneaking hypnotic subliminal messages into recordings of her songs,” Danny explained.

Ember rolled her eyes. “It’s not a habit, it was one time.”

“It was a really annoying one time. I still haven’t forgiven you for that plank stunt.”

“You’re the one who turned it into a stunt!”

“So, Ember, what do you remember from before your death?” Maddie wisely cut them off, much the way she did when Danny and Jazz were bickering at the table.

Ember shrugged. Danny watched her, genuinely curious what her answer would be. His own ghost core had more or less integrated with his existing nervous system, as far as he and Jazz had been able to determine using their parents’ less invasive tools. Ember’s experience had likely been quite different.

“Eh, lots of feelings,” said Ember. “Not a lot of details.”

“Can you give an example?”

“I still loved music a lot, but the names of my old favorite bands were gone. Didn’t matter, though; the feelings were the important part. There was plenty of new music to love.”

Danny’s mom nodded. “You seem to have recalled your name? Or did you find it out later?” The human Ember McLain had been a Casper High junior who’d died at the extremely haunted North Mercy Hospital in the late 1960s. Several locals had dug into her history, since Ember was among the most famous musicians from Amity Park now. (The outsiders who were still convinced that Amity’s ghost problem was a hoax regularly complained about how inappropriate they found a musician’s using the identity of a dead teenager as a gimmick.)

Danny hoped his parents hadn’t spent enough time during their preparations for this interview comparing pictures of orange-haired human Ember to pictures of her blue-haired ghost self to develop any theories about the commonness of ghost hair color inversion.

“Nah, I remembered that,” Ember answered. “I was all worried when I was dying that everyone would just forget my name. But they sure know it now, huh?” She grinned.

“Did you ever visit your living family?” Jack asked.

Danny suppressed a wince. Apparently his dad was still on about this family thing.

“What, as a ghost?” asked Ember.

“If you remembered your name, you could find them again! Right?”

“I guess.” Ember shrugged again. “What would be the point? It had been years, they would want me to be someone I wasn’t anymore, and they couldn’t have helped me now any more than they could’ve stopped me dying in the first place. It would’ve just been a mess.”

Danny looked away.

Maddie spoke up. “So the feelings about your family that carried over weren’t strong?”

Ember readjusted her legs. “You gotta pick which feelings you indulge,” she explained. “And people make a terrible obsession most of the time. You need something you can get a constant kick out of: some fickle person? Awful idea. You’d either unravel your own core soon as they asked you to go away, or turn into a total creep.”

Vlad went the “total creep” route, unfortunately, Danny thought.

“Do you get most of the emotional energy your core needs to sustain itself by indulging your obsession, then, instead of from ambient emotions?” Maddie asked excitedly.

Ember was studying her fingernails when Danny looked back. “Yeah, usually,” she answered his mom. “You can use a bunch of humans’ emotions instead, and that’s a trip —” She saw Danny’s glare and grinned — “but Babypop will get all pissy about it.”

“People can die that way,” Danny reminded her, shaking off memories of Ember’s first concert and Spectra’s various visits to Amity Park.

Ember rolled her eyes. “So what? If they die where a bunch of ghost stuff is happening, they get a cool death plus a way better chance of becoming ghosts. And who cares anyway — they’d only live for like a century tops in any case.”

“I care.”

“Yeah, we know, weirdo.”

“Is Phantom very strange for a ghost, then?” asked Maddie.

Ember grinned wickedly as she turned back to Danny’s parents. “Oh, yeah. Total nutcase. So easy to provoke, and there’s a running bet on which power he’ll completely forget he can use the next time he’s in a fight.”

“I’m getting better!” Danny protested. It wasn’t his fault that a lot of his fighting instincts came from the large portion of his life that he’d spent learning to fight without ghost powers before suddenly getting ghost powers thrown into the mix.

“And a complete sucker, too,” Ember went on. Danny blushed furiously. “Falls for just about any distraction you can think up, tries to ‘talk things out’ half the time when the other party clearly isn’t listening, makes the dumbest deals — oh, man, you’re so green right now, Babypop. I totally would’ve done this for free if you’d been smart enough to ask; this is the most fun I’ve had all week.”

“You still can,” Danny gritted out. “I can tell everyone you got ghost flu and had to cancel the concert.”

Ember laughed. “Nah, you won’t. You’re such a goody-two-shoes you’d keep your word even if it was gonna destroy you. I bet that’s why half the Ancients think you’re just the cutest little thing.”

Danny buried his face in his hands.

“Got any other questions about Babypop?” Ember asked his parents. “I can’t tell you everything there is to know about him, but I can sure tell you a lot. There was this one time he crossed the Ghost Writer —”

“I’d like to know more about how your obsession formed,” Maddie cut her off, finally, thankfully, taking pity on Danny; he was going to give her the biggest hug before he went to bed.

“Aw,” Ember huffed. “You’re as boring as he is. Fine, what do you want to know about it?”

Maddie smiled. “You suggested that you could nurture a specific obsession?”

Ember made a noncommittal gesture. “Sorta. A lot of obsessions are complex, and you can focus on specific aspects of ‘em if you’ve got one of those. And they can shift over time. Not, like, completely change, or you’d probably destabilize, but something could start as a corollary of your obsession and then grow into your main obsession. My music started off as a corollary to people remembering me, but now it’s its own thing.”

“That’s a fascinating theory,” Maddie remarked, taking notes. Danny bit his tongue. Of course his parents couldn’t just take a ghost’s word for it; he should probably brace for a lot of scientific probing into what his obsession was and how it shifted over time.

“So what does it start as, Ember?” asked Jack.

Ember just blinked at him.

“Clarify,” Danny instructed his dad. Jack didn’t always seem to realize when he wasn’t being understood.

Jack nodded, used to such prompting. “What does your obsession start as, before you focus on some part of it and it changes? Is it what you were thinking about or, uh, feeling the moment you died? When ectoplasm got sucked in to form your core?”

“What? I dunno.” Ember appeared to think for a moment, and then the wicked grin returned to her face. “Maybe it is. I’d definitely believe that that dork was thinking ‘Oh no, I have to protect them,’ instead of anything remotely — Whoa. Babypop?”

Her voice sounded echoey. More echoey than usual.

“Babypop, are you …?”

A great big flash, and pain, and sensing that everything was about to change, knowing that everything was about to change, that something was coming now that would change everything, and Sam and Tucker were behind him and Amity Park was out there behind them and he had to stop whatever was coming before they were sucked into this pain too but he couldn’t move —

“Whoops. Guess that, uh, is what it was. Babypop, look at me —”

Was he burning or freezing? He couldn’t breathe. He had to protect them. He couldn’t breathe —

There was a sound, a guitar chord, and suddenly Danny’s spiraling thoughts were replaced with the fact that Ember McLain, the coolest person ever, was right next to him, and wasn’t that awesome?

“What — Hey!” Danny shook his head and glared at her.

Ember held up her hands. “No real hypnosis, just needed to get ya thinking about something else,” she said. “You good now?”

Danny groaned. His head ached. Letting his parents interview Ember had been a terrible idea. “Why did I agree to this?” he muttered to himself.

“Because you’re a dolt,” Ember answered for him. “But, uh. Sorry. I thought I was talking out of my — I didn’t think you really — Don’t tell Walker.”

That was an absurd enough prospect to snap Danny’s attention back to the present. He furrowed his eyebrows at Ember. “Why would I ever willingly talk to Walker?” The guy wasn’t even fun at Truces, since he spent the whole time either grumbling about all of his prisoners being let out or searching for Truce violators so that he could start filling his jail back up. “Wait, is not talking about how people died a Rule or something?”

“Only for little baby ghosts,” Ember told him. “It’ll stop hurting to think about after a few decades. Promise.”

“Can’t wait.” Danny sighed.

“What …” Maddie said faintly. Danny and Ember looked up to see his parents staring at them, both rubbing their arms as if cold. “What happened?”

Danny looked down. “Oh,” he said. The floor was iced over for several feet around his chair. “Uh, sorry.” He closed his eyes and focused on unmaking the ice, which was trickier than making it. The room’s temperature slowly rose.

Ember said, meanwhile, “Nothing we’re gonna be bringing up again, so shut it and ask me something that doesn’t have to do with death memories.”

Maddie was silent, but Jack took right to the challenge of a new topic. “How often do you sleep?” he asked Ember.

“Every few days, normally,” Ember replied. “Plus after I’ve had a fight or have just spent a bunch of time outside the Zone …”

The conversation continued on the topic of ectobiology from Ember’s perspective for some time. Danny’s parents managed to refrain from making any particularly dismissive comments; Ember didn’t roast Danny again (possibly out of worry that he would try to sic Walker on her, which he wouldn’t, but he could wait until the end of the night to reassure her of that); and Danny didn’t need to intervene. Some of the information was new to him: he hadn’t known that ghosts absorbed ambient ectoplasm at a faster rate while asleep or that sufficiently emotionally charged information, such as new languages, could be absorbed directly rather than learned. Much of it, he did already know. He tried to tune out the discussion of ghost reproduction, not because it was gross in and of itself (it involved ghosts maintaining a duplicate for so long that the duplicate’s ectosignature grew different from theirs, often for the purpose of merging the jettisoned duplicates of two or more ghosts together into a new “child” ghost), but because his initial relief at first learning that Box Lunch had been produced asexually had been quickly quashed by the discovery that ghosts who chose to reproduce with each other had likely already been having sex for decades. He paid more attention to Ember’s explanation for how to differentiate between blob ghosts who really were ectoplasmic balls of some basic emotion and complex ghosts who just looked blobby, since he had a hard time explaining that himself without referencing his ghost sense.

Eventually, inevitably, Maddie did ask if Ember would be willing to give them an ectoplasm sample.

“You do not have to,” Danny told Ember firmly.

Ember looked more confused than anything. “What are they asking for?” she asked Danny.

Danny pantomimed an ectoplasm draw. “They want to poke a needle in your arm and pull out some ectoplasm to look at under a microscope or whatever. It’s not all that painful, if they just stick to that.”

Danny saw his dad wince.

Ember wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, what’s the point? Once it’s outside me, it’ll just go back to being normal ectoplasm. They can get normal ectoplasm without sticking needles in me.”

“Phantom’s ectoplasm actually showed some very interesting structure,” Maddie argued.

“Wait.” Ember wheeled on Danny. “They took samples from you?!”

Ember sounded so much like Sam had on Sunday that Danny instinctively held up his hands and said, “It really wasn’t that bad —”

“Destroy them.”

“What?” Danny popped up and got between Ember and his parents. “I know their research ethics are questionable, but that’s really way too harsh a response —”

“The samples, Babypop,” Ember clarified.

“Oh.” Danny drifted back to the ground in relief. “Wait, why?”

“Because there’s a bounty out for clean samples from you, idiot,” Ember told him.

“There’s what? Who would —” And didn’t that question just answer itself. Danny rubbed his forehead. “Duh. How long has that been a thing?”

“I dunno, a year and a half?”

“Yeah.” Danny sighed. “It’s fine. That ship sailed a while ago.”

Ember stared at him for several seconds and finally said, “Oh. Is that how Danielle …?”

“You know Danielle?” Danny asked, turning to Ember in surprise.

“Yeah, I give her music lessons and she comes to get me whenever she finds a portal to a good concert. She’s way cooler than you.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”

Ember smirked at him, but the expression lasted only for a moment before a frown replaced it. “So does Danielle, uh, work for Plasmius, then?”

“No,” Danny told her. “Very much no. The last time they were in the same room, she punched him in the face. Into a wall.” He smiled at the memory.

“Whoa, that’s awesome.”

“It really was.”

Ember hesitated a moment before asking, “So is Plasmius … after her now?”

She sounded so genuinely concerned that Danny gave her an honest answer. “Sometimes, yeah,” he admitted. “Clockwork looks out for her, though.” And so do I, whenever she’s in Amity Park, he thought, but he knew that was far less impressive. It hurt maybe a tiny bit that Dani seemed to prefer Clockwork’s guidance to his own, but he supposed that being the infinitely knowledgeable Master of Time meant it carried more weight when Clockwork said that Dani’s existence wasn’t a mistake than when Danny said the same.

Ember wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, that stick-in-the-mud. Yeah, she’ll be fine.”

“Who’s Danielle?” asked Jack.

Oh, right. Danny’s parents were still here. “She’s my cousin,” Danny said, succinctly. (And wasn’t that going to be a whole explanation once they knew who he was. He did hope for Dani to meet his parents eventually — she reminded him so much of his dad sometimes; he was sure they would enjoy each other’s company — but his parents needed to have … accepted the halfa thing first, or else he couldn’t be sure that she’d be safe.) “Uh, ghost cousin. We have a lot in common, but she isn’t tied to Amity Park the way I am. She spends her time exploring the Ghost Zone, mostly.”

There was a knock on the door leading out to the stage, thankfully putting an end to that topic of discussion.

“Yeah?” Ember called.

A black-clad stagehand stepped in. “Uh, Ms. McLain. Phantom. The concertgoers are asking when the doors will open …?”

Danny glanced at the clock. Four minutes left in their interview hour; twenty-four to the concert. “Tell them I’ll be there to let them in in five minutes,” he said.

The stagehand gave him a thumbs-up and left to deliver this news.

“About the ectoplasm sample?” Maddie pressed, also glancing at the clock.

Ember hummed in thought. Then she smiled. “Tell you what,” she said to the Fentons, “I’ll give it to you if you mind my concert tonight instead of Babypop here.”

Alarm bells went off in Danny’s head. “What are you planning, Ember?” he said, crossing his arms.

“Nothing, you dweeb. I can get glared at all night by someone who might have a better taste in music than you, thanks. They can hardly have a worse one.”

Danny just narrowed his eyes at her.

Ember rolled her own eyes. “And also you look beat and Skulker said he’ll go after anyone who tires you out too much this week.”

“Really?” Danny blinked. Was that why the past two days had been so quiet? “I didn’t ask him to do that —”

“‘Course you didn’t, Babypop; he just wants you back to normal by next week.”

“Why, has he got some new weapon that he’s rearing to try out?”

Ember just grinned at him.

“Aw, man.” Wasn’t that exactly what Danny needed right now.

“I can tell you wha-at,” Ember taunted in a sing-song voice.

Danny massaged his aching temples. “I’m not telling Walker on you,” he offered in trade.

“And?” Ember prompted.

“And … I’ll give you two encores.” He was normally strict about concert end times, since he had other things to get done and could only take so much of listening to Ember sing about herself.

Ember nodded her agreement. “Revamped electrified nets.”

“Shi…p rats.”

She laughed at him. “Have fun dodging, Babypop. Now buzz off and get some sleep or something.”

“We’ll, uh,” Jack put in, looking concerned about the exchange he’d just witnessed, “mind the concert?”

“If we can collect an ectoplasm sample before and after you indulge your obsession tonight,” Maddie quickly added, staring at Ember with a focused and mildly horrifying expression that Danny could only refer to as “scientific intent.”

“Ugh.” Ember’s lip wrinkled in distaste. “How big are your guys’ samples?”

Maddie took out a vial to demonstrate.

“Bleh. Fine. Now make him go home,” Ember said, pointing a thumb at Danny.

“That’s not a good idea,” Danny warned his parents.

Jack turned to him like a man doggedly fighting the realization that he was out of his depth. “You can go, Phantom; we’ve got this one,” he tried.

Danny didn’t budge. “Every person in the audience will need to be wearing a Specter Deflector,” he explained. “Then scanned for any recording devices and made to put them in a locker before entering. Then you’d need to monitor the whole venue the whole time to make sure nothing goes wrong, and get Ember to actually stop without a fight when the concert’s over, and collect all the Specter Deflectors that belong to the venue and watch the autographing to make sure there’s no more music slipped in. You didn’t come here prepared to do all that and —”

“Isn’t part of trust trusting each other’s competence?” Jack interrupted, and Danny stopped.

He didn’t have any rebuttal.

Encouraged, Jack said, not ungently, “Trust has to start somewhere, right? We can do this one. You need to rest. Go home, okay?”

“Okay —” Danny stopped himself just in time before saying, “Dad.” He exhaled slowly. “Okay. Fine.”

Ember laughed in delight. “I should’ve made them telling you off part of the show,” she told Danny. “It was beautiful. You caved in like a house of cards. Can you guys send me the recording of that? I bet I can work it into a song.”

Danny glared at her. He tossed the call device that Tucker had given him to eventually give his parents, which had been paired with the new call device Danny had gotten since his last one had been fried by the GIW’s electric shocks, over to his dad. “First of all, don’t,” he told his parents. “Second of all, press the big button on this if you need help tonight.” The device could fit in a toddler’s hand, and its functionality was limited to sending an alert to paired call devices, turning on the bearer’s location, and then opening up a voice chat when Danny pressed the corresponding button on his own call device. Even so, it was an impressive enough device that Danny thought Tucker’s mom should start recruiting her son to her communications tech company now, before a different employer got him.

“Ooh, what does that do?” Ember asked.

“Calls me,” Danny said succinctly.

“Ugh, it looks way too sleek to do something that disappointing,” said Ember.

“Well, fortunately, I don’t have one to give you.” Danny drifted toward the ceiling. He’d agreed to leave; he shouldn’t stay. Trust has to start somewhere. “Right, again, let me know if anything happens,” he told his parents. “And break a leg, Ember. Please break a leg so bad it won’t heal by Saturday.”

“Yeah, yeah, choke on your own ectoplasm,” Ember dismissed him in turn. “See ya.”

“Bye, Phantom!” Maddie called. Jack finally looked up from the call device to echo his wife.

Danny waved to his parents as he phased through the ceiling.

He turned invisible afterwards and poked his head back in to watch for a few minutes longer, just in case, but things seemed to go alright. None of the three of them looked comfortable, but there was no drama, and soon enough Maddie had a new ectoplasm sample stored away and was bidding Ember a good show with substantially more grace than Danny had. When the three of them left the room, they parted ways, Jack and Maddie heading towards the front of the building to get the audience prepped, Ember heading towards the stage for a sound check.

Right. Okay. I have an essay to write. Danny flew out of the building and aimed himself home. He’d keep his call device (he was not calling it a NotiFoley) nearby, of course, but … maybe it would be alright to just focus on his essay and not keep an eye on the news. A full ghost had just judged Jack and Maddie safe to make deals with; why shouldn’t Danny do the same? Trust has to start somewhere. He could let go for tonight, let Ember and his parents work things out between themselves without his mediation. He could try trusting that they would be able to do it and wait to hear how it went.

And if his parents could run an Ember concert without violence breaking out on any side, then maybe it wouldn’t be wrong to hope that they could see Phantom as a true ally someday.

Chapter Text

Jack had put the Fenton Tape Recorder in a locker before Ember’s concert started, but he’d forgotten to turn it off up until then.

By seven o’ clock on Saturday morning, he’d listened to the interview recording three times. He and Maddie had agreed back on Tuesday to focus on gathering data for at least two weeks, leaving the review and analysis of it until later: even the Monday night negotiation recording alone would take a long time to analyze, and having more data collected before starting in on analysis meant their analysis would be less likely led astray, and they could only gather data so easily for as long as their alliance with Phantom held, and who knew how long that would be? (Hopefully a long time. Hopefully a very long time. They were getting so much information, and … and, alright, the ability to call Phantom for backup if they ever needed it was much more relieving than it should be, than either Jack or Maddie would dare admit aloud. They had had Phantom’s call button for three days and had so far only used it to receive one ghost activity report from Phantom about a canine ghost playing fetch in the park with him, but Jack already didn’t want to give it up. That ghost boy was good in a crisis.)

Still. Putting off relistening to the recordings was nigh-on impossible. There was just … so much in them.

“Did you ever visit your living family?”

“What would be the point? They would want me to be someone I wasn’t anymore, and they couldn’t have helped me now any more than they could’ve stopped me dying … People make a terrible obsession, most of the time.”

and

“I’d definitely believe that that dork was thinking ‘Oh no, I have to protect them,’ instead of anything remotely — Whoa. Babypop? Babypop, are you …? Whoops. Guess that, uh, is what it was. Babypop, look at me …”

and, most confusingly of all, the exchange in the hallway when Ember had caught up to Maddie and Jack just before they’d reached the front of the establishment to start letting the concertgoers inside.

“Alright, he’s actually gone now.”

Jack’s own confused voice: “Huh?”

“Brat just can’t let other people handle things without hovering around awhile to watch how it goes, can he. Right, listen up, Fentons, because I’m only warning you once. Don’t hurt Babypop. You’ll be miserable for the rest of your whole existence if you do.”

A confused silence as the implied threat sank in, and then Maddie’s voice: “You’re allies with Phantom?”

A scoff. “Allied to that pathetic sap? No way. He doesn’t know how to mind his own business, his music taste is awful, and he’s more famous than me and doesn’t even appreciate it!”

“But you’d defend him?”

“I only warned you two. As obnoxious as the dork is, nobody with sense wants him gone. Someone needs to keep Pariah in the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep and get in the way of Plasmius’s worse ideas. And deal with the more dangerous ghostly artifacts that pop up, like he keeps doing. No one misses the ones he’s destroyed. You’d regret breaking him for all those reasons and more, and that’s all I’ll say about it. Don’t tell him that I talked to you.”

And that was it. Ember had turned back towards the stage without another word or any further signs of aggression. It was by far the strangest interaction Jack had ever had with a ghost, even counting all of Phantom’s bizarre behavior. Ghosts were not normally cryptic with their threats, nor inclined to defend someone secretly.

Ember and Phantom seemed almost like a pair of people who hated being related to each other but refused to renege on the bonds of family. In Ember’s case, Jack supposed that could be chalked up to the reasons for which she’d claimed Phantom was useful to have around. In Phantom’s case …

Was Phantom’s obsession protection? Protecting “them,” if Ember had hit his death memory right on its head. Protecting his family? His family that he didn’t talk to, because getting too obsessed with people could be dangerous for ghosts, because his family hadn’t saved him before, because whatever he’d seen of his family since his death had led him to believe they wouldn’t want him now, not as a ghost.

Ember had said that ghosts could lean into specific aspects of their obsessions. That couldn’t be taken as fact without better evidence, but if it was true, was that what Phantom was doing? Leaning into the “protection” part of his core obsession while distancing himself from the “family” part? Was that healthy? Ember had claimed that her own obsession had shifted towards music over time, but being remembered remained a huge theme in the songs that they’d heard her perform. “Obsessions can’t, like, completely change,” she’d told them, “or you’d probably destabilize …”

And if Phantom had moved past a need for family, why was there a ghost he referred to as his cousin? Why did he treat Ember, whose basic mode of interaction with him appeared to be sparring with him either verbally or literally, so familially? Why did he give way to the Fentons, who apparently reminded him of his parents, whenever they acted the least bit parental towards him?

Why did missing his family make him cry?

“Jack?”

Jack turned to see Maddie on the lab stairs, dressed for the day but still rubbing sleep from her eyes.

“Morning, Maddie!” He grinned at her. “There’s coffee in the kitchen if you want it! Big day, huh?”

Maddie smiled fondly at him. “Did you wake up early and get too excited to fall back asleep?”

“Got it in one.”

Maddie came down to see what he was working on. He’d shown her the finished Fenton Flexible Faraday Cage prototype yesterday, so she would know that wasn’t his current project.

“Just, ah, going back over some data,” Jack admitted.

“Any luck with figuring out which of Phantom’s powers lets him slip through our ghost shields?” Maddie asked.

“Ah.” The Fentons had formalized their alliance with Phantom on Thursday after a long debate in which Jazz had interjected herself between her parents at the kitchen table, gone through the revised draft that Phantom had given them on Wednesday, and pointed out how fair and reasonable each amendment was and how good of a deal it was for them overall and was there anything else her parents really cared about that they were at all likely to get from Phantom and that wasn’t already in the draft?

Danny had complained that they were giving him a headache with all their arguing and had gone to bed early.

Jazz had ultimately convinced her parents to accept the agreement as-is. They had gone out and done so that night, not meaning to waste any time before they could collect more research data. Phantom had immediately handed them a three-ring binder containing both a list of all his ghost powers with what statistics he’d learned from prior testing of them and a brief informational file on every ghost save for himself that he knew had visited Amity Park at least twice, to simplify giving the Fentons ghost activity reports. True to his word, indeed, if the information was accurate.

Maddie and Jack had technically had all of Friday to go through Phantom’s binder, but Maddie had been running tests on Ember’s ectoplasm and looking through the code in Phantom’s call button to learn how it worked, and Jack had been developing the Fenton Flexible Faraday Cage. As valuable as the binder was, neither of them had yet given it more than a glance-through.

“I was listening to the Wednesday recording again, actually,” Jack admitted, feeling a bit sheepish.

“Mm,” Maddie said sympathetically. “It was … deeply interesting.”

Jack gave a dry laugh. “I can’t believe ghosts have such complicated relationships with each other. They always looked so territorial!”

“Their side of the interview could have been rehearsed to give us a false impression,” Maddie pointed out.

Jack raised his eyebrows at her. “You think all that was rehearsed?” He tried to imagine how ghosts, how anyone, could have rehearsed one side of an interview to the point of making it seem flawlessly spontaneous, let alone done so with only a day’s lead time. “And if they did rehearse it, they would’ve had to work together on that, yeah?”

“I know. I’m …” Maddie sighed. “I’m trying to think through every possible explanation.”

“Well, we don’t have to analyze it yet,” Jack tried to reassure his wife. Hypocritically, considering what he’d been doing all morning.

Maddie was silent.

“Mads?” Jack asked, unsure of what was troubling his wife.

“Jack,” said Maddie, somewhat distantly, “do you remember the time that Phantom ripped off Danny’s face?”

“Oh yeah.” That had been a while ago, and Danny had ultimately scared the ghost off himself and had seemed perfectly fine afterward, so Jack hadn’t dwelt on it. “Huh,” Jack said thoughtfully, “D’you think Danny meant it metaphorically? Phantom kinda looks like him, doesn’t he?”

“Does he?” Maddie’s eyebrows furrowed.

“A little, in the face — Oh.” Jack mentally kicked himself for forgetting Maddie’s near-faceblindness. It didn’t often come up, since each member of their family had decided on a narrow range of outfits long ago and dressed according to it daily, and there weren’t many other people Maddie was expected to recognize without context.

“Danny did say he had ‘no face’ then, though,” Maddie reminded Jack.

“Oh, right. Well, we can ask Danny about it tomorrow! He does seem to like Phantom generally.” Less so than his sister did, but then, unlike Jazz, Danny didn’t typically enjoy talking about or analyzing specific ghosts. He seemed a little more comfortable talking to his parents about ghosts generically, without differentiation between them. Jack couldn’t say he blamed Danny: life had been easier, if less scientifically interesting, back when all ghosts had seemed to be the same.

“I suppose so,” Maddie agreed. “I hope he’s having a good time at Tucker’s.”

Danny was staying over at the Foley house for most of the weekend to take part in an extended edition Lord of the Rings marathon. Jack and Maddie normally tried to spend at least one of the weekend days with their kids — to think their little Jazzy would be moving out in just a few months! Hadn’t she been a toddler just yesterday? — but Phantom had asked that testing be kept to the weekends, when there was no need to keep an eye on the ghost-attractive field that was a high school crammed with hundreds of emotionally volatile adolescents, so Maddie and Jack would be busy for the next several weekends anyway.

“I’m sure those boys are having a great time!” said Jack.

“I’m sure,” Maddie agreed, still distantly.

Jack frowned. “Mads?” he asked again.

Maddie drummed her fingers distractedly against the lab table. Finally, she turned to her husband and asked, “Jack, if Phantom ever attacked one of our kids again, you wouldn’t hesitate to take him down, would you?”

“What? Of course not! No ghost messes with a Fenton and gets away with it!” He grinned, expecting the familiar surge of excitement at the prospect of bringing down a ghost for his family, but it … didn’t come. He just felt kind of hollow, and betrayed, at the thought of having to do so to Phantom. Huh. But still: between a ghost and his family, Jack knew there was no question which he would choose, even if the ghost had managed to take all enjoyment out of it.

Jack frowned. “Do you think I would hesitate?” he asked haltingly. He thought he wouldn’t, but Maddie knew him at least as well as he knew himself.

Maddie shook her head. “No,” she admitted, “I think I would.”

“Oh.”

She gave him a tight smile. “I’ve always hesitated when it’s him,” she confessed. “Enough for him to get away, sometimes. He just seems so much like he could be a school friend of one of our kids. The impression gets stronger and stronger the more we talk to him.” She sighed. “If it’s deliberate, it’s very clever of him.”

Jack thought it over. Ghosts certainly had some control over their mannerisms and appearance; how much, Jack and Maddie weren’t yet sure. “It might be deliberate, but I doubt he does it for our sake,” he said.

Maddie nodded. “Right. The family obsession theory.” She pursed her lips. “There really might be something there. Phantom gets so focused every time we bring up his family. Ember said people-based obsessions could make a ghost unstable …”

Phantom blurring out and leaking ectoplasm onto the floor of their lab, not even one week ago.

Jack shivered. “She didn’t say that they always do,” he reassured himself aloud.

“And we can’t take her word for it with no evidence,” Maddie added, sounding a little like she was reassuring herself as well.

“Yeah.” Jack glanced at the binder. “Hey, I wonder if there’s a file on that cousin ghost in here,” he thought aloud, flipping it open. The ghost files had an index page at the front; he scanned it until he found a “Danielle ‘Dani’ Phantom” and turned to the right page.

Danielle’s file appeared to have the same categories as every other ghost file. The main noticeable difference was in the photo: where most of the files’ photos focused on only one ghost, Danielle’s was a group shot containing Phantom and Red Huntress as well. The ghost in the center was the smallest of the three and looked just like a younger, female version of Phantom. Her hair was in a ponytail and her suit had a bare midriff (for the sake of exchanging power to and from her central core more easily? For style? Jack hoped the ghost girl wasn’t actually using that as a hazmat suit). She appeared to be animatedly telling a story while Huntress looked on fondly and Phantom doubled over himself with laughter.

Danielle “Dani” Phantom

Status: Free; consistent ally
Complexity class (Fenton scale): 7
Amity Park visitation frequency: Uncommon (5-15x/yr)
Strength: Roughly equivalent to Danny Phantom. However, destabilizes more easily and thus typically avoids fighting unless her or another’s existence is on the line.
Favored attacks: See note above under “Strength.”
Obsession (best guess): Category: exploration
Notable relationships:
- Danny Phantom: family
- Red Huntress: close friend
- Clockwork: guardian
- Frostbite: mentor
- Ember McLain: friend, apparently?
—> note: confirm w/ Dani
- Vlad Plasmius: very bad history; particular enemy
Other important information: A major source for updating our Ghost Zone information. Please render Dani assistance if spotted, in particular if Plasmius is also in the vicinity.

“Oh,” breathed Maddie, reading over Jack’s shoulder. Jack followed her eyes back to the file’s photo. “He looks so happy.”

Jack studied the photo again. Phantom did look far happier, chatting with his cousin, than Jack could ever recall seeing him before. Phantom smiled often, sure, but never as unguardedly as this.

“Maybe we should try to find his other family,” Maddie mused. “At least to let them know. I just can’t imagine that, some part of your child being out there fighting ghosts all the time, and not even knowing it.”

Jack said nothing. Technically, his parents had a child out here fighting ghosts all the time and didn’t know it. Or at least, they didn’t believe it. He really couldn’t put into words how it felt to have his parents not believe a single thing he said. And, well, as long as they stayed out of each other’s lives, he didn’t have to attempt to put it into words that they might listen to, anyway.

“Don’t you think we should, Jack?” Maddie asked.

Jack shook his head. “Not if Phantom doesn’t want to,” he answered. “I don’t know how we would find them without his help, anyway; we haven’t got much to go on besides the name ‘Danny,’ which he might’ve taken as a ghost because it was common.” “Phantom” must have been a name he’d taken as a ghost, after all, and there were so many Dannys among the current high school generation that Jack’s son’s classmates apparently called him “Fenton” more often than “Danny,” to distinguish. “We’ll just have to … see if we can get him to trust us enough to let us.”

Maddie frowned. “Do you think we can?”

“I don’t know,” said Jack. He looked down at his Fenton Flexible Faraday Cage schematics. “But we can try.”

… … …

Phantom had said he would meet the Fentons just outside the radiology center, but a figure was waiting by the GAV when they stepped out of Fentonworks. A non-ghostly figure.

“Hello, Huntress!” Maddie called.

The Red Huntress, fully suited up but standing on the grass rather than hovering, inclined her head. The Fentons had last spoken to her on Tuesday, when they’d managed to catch up to her on her patrol and confirm what Phantom had told them about his alliance with her. They didn’t see her very often. She sourced her tech from somewhere other than Fentonworks; Jack still didn’t know where, though he’d asked her a few times.

“Heard you two finally made an alliance with Phantom,” Huntress said.

“Sure did!” said Jack, slinging his bag over his shoulder as he walked down the steps. Most of the town likely knew about the new alliance by now. Jack and Maddie had followed the Red Huntress’s example and Phantom’s implied request and had sent a memo about it out to the local news station on Thursday night. If the Fentons were going to do this, they might as well do it right. … And reap the benefit of fewer sour looks from their fellow, Phantom-supporting citizens.

“Are you interested in making it three-way?” Maddie asked Huntress.

Huntress had offered a three-way alliance to them once, hadn’t she? Jack wondered if he could get Huntress to agree to let him take a closer look at her suit as a term of alliance —

The Red Huntress shook her head. “I don’t want any part in the scientific torment thing you guys have got going on.”

“It’s not torment,” Maddie protested. “It’s basic medical scans for ectoscience research.”

“Whatever you want to call it,” said Huntress. “It’s weird and invasive and I’m not getting involved. But, uh. Congrats anyway, and welcome to the Ghost Getters. Let me know when you guys get the list of Phantom’s ghost power stats —”

“Got it right here!” Jack interrupted, pulling Phantom’s binder out of his bag.

“What?” Huntress blinked. “Already? Did that idiot sleep at all this week? Wait, why are you carrying that around?”

“Waiting room reading,” Jack explained. He wouldn’t have much to do for a lot of today besides wait, not being trained in any medical procedures beyond first aid.

“Don’t read that in public. What part of ‘sensitive information’ didn’t you get?”

Jack’s binder-laden hand fell in chagrin.

Maddie asked, “Did Phantom ask you to come here?”

“No,” said Huntress. “I mean, he let me know that you’re doing x-rays this morning, in case the radiation knocks him out for a while and he can’t respond to calls. I just came to see if you wanted to set up a way to share our contingency plans for if someone tries to take over Phantom.”

“Oh, right!” said Jack. “He said there was one power you didn’t have a countermeasure for yet?”

Huntress hesitated. Then she sighed. “Can we get into your Ghost Assault Vehicle if you want to discuss this right now? I assume it can be soundproofed?”

“You bet!” said Jack.

They climbed into the GAV. Jack powered up the soundproofing. Huntress had somehow gotten a hold of his binder — she moved fast — and opened it to Phantom’s ghost powers statistics.

“Right,” Huntress told them. “It’s the ghostly wail. The trick is that it’s really hard for anything to get close to him if he’s doing it; pretty much everything gets blown back.”

Maddie looked at the statistics sheet. “A sonic attack?” she asked. “I’m not sure I’ve seen that.”

“Phantom doesn’t use it much. We’ve only measured it in the Zone, where it’s less risky because the ectoplasm absorbs some of its force.”

“Ectoplasm can absorb it?” asked Jack, getting engineering ideas, at the same time as Maddie said, “You’ve been inside the Ghost Zone?”

Huntress stared at Maddie. “Yeah; you haven’t? Hasn’t your portal been active for like two years?”

“Not quite that long, but — how did you survive? The atmosphere might be breathable, but any equipment we send in breaks down within half an hour, no matter how sturdy we make it.”

“That’s probably because of Walker’s goons,” said Huntress. “Try equipment that’s not a sitting duck next time. It should be fine if it moves fast. The goons aren’t quick, and Walker himself doesn’t come out very often.”

That was the third time that name had come up this week. Jack picked up the binder and looked for Walker’s file.

“Is it only ‘Walker’s goons’ who fight inside the Zone?” Maddie asked, meanwhile.

The Red Huntress shrugged. “No, but there aren’t fights all the time. Ghosts mostly hang out in their own lairs. The Zone’s unsettling, but it’s relatively peaceful if you stay away from certain parts of it and don’t randomly open doors.”

“Aha!” said Jack, setting down the binder with Walker’s file face-up.

Walker

Status: Free; consistent enemy
Complexity class (Fenton scale): 6
Amity Park visitation frequency: Rare (1-4x/yr)
Strength: Mainly relies on his goons (has a few dozen, all complexity class 4, individually weak but they attack in numbers). On his own, can be a dangerous brawler and tactician.
Favored attacks: Overshadowing; kidnapping; misdirection
Obsession (best guess): Punishing violators of a very outdated book of Rules (possibly what was current in the Zone when he became a ghost, but might be older)
—> note: He won’t let me look through his Rule book :(
—> note: Dude why did you even try to?
Notable relationships:
- Bullet: 2nd in command, of questionable loyalty to Walker
- Wulf: particular enemy; Walker expends a lot of his resources on chasing Wulf
- Has subordinates but no allies
Other important information: Lair is literally an old-timey prison with poor security. His own ventures into the Real World are usually attempts either to recapture an escapee or to make the Real World less hospitable to ghosts. Harbors particular grudges against anyone who can cross easily between the Ghost Zone and the Real World (regardless of species). Very seldom keeps his word: negotiation is not a recommended course of action. Avoids killing humans (thus far) but has no apparent compunction against torturing them. Particularly fond of shock collars.

“Yeah, that’s the guy,” said Huntress, pointing to the fedora-wearing white ghost in the foreground of the file’s photo. She moved her finger to one of the metal-clad green ghosts in the background. “His goons all look exactly like that.”

Jack’s eye caught on the description of Walker’s lair. “What does Phantom’s lair look like?” he asked, curious.

Huntress shook her head. “Ghost Boy doesn’t have a lair yet. He’s only been around a couple years.”

Jack wondered where Phantom had flown to, then, when he’d gone “home” on Wednesday night.

“So he is new,” said Maddie, staring at Phantom’s binder without seeming to see it. “I wonder if that’s why his ghostly attributes haven’t developed much yet?”

Huntress snorted. “Which ghostly attributes? The guy can walk through walls.”

“I meant his personality,” said Maddie.

“Doubt that’s gonna change,” said Huntress. “I met a ghost who was a couple thousand years old once, and he was basically just like Phantom in yeti form. The worst ghost I’ve ever met is your guys’s age, and from what I’ve heard, he’s always acted the way he does now. Anyway, don’t you have somewhere to be?”

“Right!” said Jack. He was sure that he could get to the radiology center in time even if they talked for several more minutes, but this was a clear request to let Huntress leave, and offending her wouldn’t win him a closer look at the tech in her suit. “Thanks for coming by, Huntress! Maddie and I will work on a ghostly wail countermeasure.”

“Make sure whatever it is won’t hurt him. We’ll need to test if it works, and you’ll regret it forever if you hurt him, I promise you,” Huntress warned, eerily reminiscent of Ember. She pulled a card out of one of her suit’s compartments. “You can reach me here if you need to talk to me. Don’t give my number out.”

Maddie took the card. “Thank you; we will. And thank you for telling us what you know about the Ghost Zone!”

“You should ask Phantom to give you a tour of the place,” Huntress advised them as she opened the nearest door of the GAV. “See ya.” She climbed out, expanded her hoverboard, and flew away.

… … …

Maddie read the information on Phantom’s ghost powers aloud while Jack drove, since Jack wouldn’t be able to bring the binder inside with him to read later. They learned quite a lot: Phantom’s top flight speed was faster than Jack had thought but slower than Maddie had thought; his max-out time for intangibility was lower than either had believed; and he was far better at overshadowing than either had dared to imagine. They were, however, no closer to knowing how he passed through ghost shields by the time they arrived.

The GAV’s ghost scanner told Jack and Maddie that a ghost was waiting in the university medical complex’s parking garage, but they didn’t actually spot Phantom until they got to the parking payment kiosk. The ghost boy was sprawled on his back atop the payment kiosk with headphones on. He pulled the headphones down to his neck when he spotted the Fentons, then hopped down.

Jack saw his wife frown at Phantom. “Why are you obeying gravity?” she asked.

“Too much weightlessness is bad for bones,” Phantom replied, like a doctor admonishing an astronaut. Jack couldn’t tell from his tone or posture whether he was joking. Phantom’s shoulders were hunched, the handles of a cloth grocery bag slung over one of them, and his expression beleaguered.

Well, Jack was sure he could cheer the ghost up at least a little. “Here, Phantom, I’ve got something for you!” He pulled the compact oval of the unactivated Fenton Flexible Faraday Cage out of his own bag. “Check this out!” He slapped it over his own abdomen and pressed the central button. A webbing of metal wires sprang out and engulfed his body.

Phantom turned reflexively intangible when the wires first appeared, then stopped when they formed around Jack instead of shooting outward. Jack grinned at him from inside the metal-mesh suit.

“So it’s supposed to do that?” Phantom asked.

“You bet!” Jack told him, moving his arms to demonstrate the suit’s maneuverability. “You’re looking at the new Fenton Flexible Faraday Cage!”

“Oh, neat,” said Phantom, and he sounded genuinely intrigued. “You know I don’t, uh, have any electricity powers, but that’s still a handy —”

So the ghost already knew what a faraday cage was. Well, Jack was sure Phantom had never seen one like this before, in any case, so Jack’s next demonstration should still be impressive. “Here, Maddie, hit me with the shock stick!” Jack cut him off.

“Should you really be testing that while you’re inside —?” Phantom started to protest, but Maddie’s shock stick connected before he could finish.

Little arcs of electricity flashed harmlessly around the outside of the Flexible Faraday Cage. Jack grinned again and gave Phantom a thumbs-up. “Don’t feel a thing!” he said.

Phantom’s shoulders relaxed in apparent relief.

Maddie collapsed her shock stick back into a utility belt attachment while Jack pressed the button to retract the metal webbing. He held the oval device out to Phantom.

“Uh …?” said the ghost, looking confused.

“I figured it would be useful against electrified nets!” said Jack. “Give you an edge against that hunter ghost this week!”

Phantom’s eyes widened. “Oh. Um … wow. Thanks.”

“Anytime, fellow Ghost Getter!” Jack said, using the Red Huntress’s nickname for Phantom allies.

Aha, yes, that won him a smile from Phantom. Not the standard, smug, confident “hero of Amity Park” smile, either, but a relaxed, open smile. Jack was going to win the ghost boy’s trust yet.

Maddie cocked her head in thought as Phantom took the Fenton Flexible Faraday Cage from Jack. “It’s funny,” she said. “‘Ghost Getters’ is also what Jazz called herself and Sam and me when we teamed up to take down that trio of ghost girls who’d made the town’s men disappear for a day.”

“What?” said Jack.

“When what happened?” said Phantom.

“Oh, you were out at Lake Eerie with Danny that weekend,” Maddie told Jack. “We took care of those ghosts no problem! And I guess you must have been disappeared with all the boys, Phantom, so you wouldn’t remember it.”

“Haha, uh, yeah, that must be why I wasn’t there,” said Phantom. “I’m … glad it all worked out?”

“Oh, it was so much fun!” Maddie reminisced. Jack tried not to feel disappointed about having missed out. He’d had a great weekend of ghost-hunting — or ghost-fishing, more like! — himself with Danny while Maddie and the girls had been having their adventure.

Maddie nudged Jack in the ribs. “I do hope Danny and Sam stay together,” she told him. “That girl is so handy with a Fenton Peeler. She would make such a wonderful par—”

“Okay let’s all stop talking and go inside so we aren’t late,” Phantom interrupted. Jack thought he caught a glimpse of the ghost’s cheeks flushing green as he turned towards the door.

“Oh, wait, Phantom!” Maddie called him back. “We still have a few minutes, and Jack and I wanted to ask you: how do you get through ghost shields? It wasn’t mentioned on your powers list.”

Phantom hesitated a moment before looking back at them. His color had returned to normal, and there was now a smirk on his face. “That would be because it’s not a ghost power,” he said.

“Huh?” said Jack.

The smirk widened. “I agreed to tell you all my ghost-related powers,” Phantom reminded them. “Getting through ghost shields doesn’t involve any ghost powers.”

“But how do you do it, then?” Jack pressed.

Phantom shrugged. “I’ll probably tell you someday.”

Maddie bit her lip in the way she did to keep herself from seething.

Phantom’s smile fell and was replaced with a pointed look at Maddie and Jack. “It’ll happen sooner if you stop trying to hack the call device I gave you to turn my location on for you without alerting me. I’ve got enough stalkers as it is, thanks,” he said.

“What?” Jack blinked at his wife, who flushed guiltily. “Mads?”

Both Jack and the ghost boy stared at Maddie until the rest of the indignation drained from her face. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice soft.

“That it didn’t work?” Phantom asked dryly.

Maddie took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “No,” she said. “I’m sorry that I tried. It wasn’t … respectful to you.”

Phantom looked surprised at Maddie’s apology, but he nodded an acceptance of it.

The three of them stared awkwardly at each other for a few seconds. None seemed ready to be the next to speak.

Eventually, Phantom cleared his throat. “Right,” he said. “Well. As much as I’m not looking forward to this, we should probably get insi—”

The nearby parking garage elevator binged to let someone out on their level. Phantom stopped talking and vanished.

Maddie and Jack were left blinking as an older couple exited the elevator and walked by them. For once, the Fentons were neither ignored as complete strangers nor given vaguely hostile looks: the couple seemed to recognize who they were and nodded friendlily as they passed by.

Jack hadn’t expected the attitudes of Amity Park residents who didn’t know the Fentons personally to change this quickly. He was still trying to process it when Phantom’s voice whispered, “Still here, just thought it’d be easier to get inside without drawing attention this way.”

Maddie jolted.

Jack, without thinking about it, held out a hand. For a moment, nothing happened; then the magnetic-repulsion-like feeling of physical contact with a ghost pressed against Jack’s hand as Phantom invisibly placed his own hand in it.

“I’m invisible, not four,” muttered the ghost, but he didn’t sound offended, and he didn’t let go. “Lead the way, then.”

Phantom didn’t reappear until they reached the CT scan prep room in the radiology clinic. Considering that the waiting room had featured a “Stay up to date on your vaccines!” poster with a graphic of Phantom punching a cartoon virus, that may have been for the best. All of their paperwork had been submitted in advance (though they had brought an extra copy of it anyway, just in case), so Maddie had gotten them checked in quickly.

They were lucky to have gotten research approval so soon, based on what the researchers they’d been speaking with had said. It helped that the Fentons were the highest authority in ectology research ethics and that their own federal grant would cover all of the equipment use costs. Still, if Maddie hadn’t pressed that this research opportunity might only be available in the short term, they might have waited months for approval.

Phantom let go of Jack’s hand as he returned to visibility. He sat down next to Maddie in one of the prep room’s provided chairs, his arms folded across his chest.

“Oh, Phantom, I brought some cotton clothes in your colors! With long sleeves and gloves,” said Maddie, reaching into the bag Jack had carried in. Black sweatpants and shirt, white slipper socks and gloves of the breathable sort meant to help moisturizer stay on the wearer’s hands. She smiled reassuringly at the ghost. “No one has to see your electrical scar if you don’t want them to.”

Phantom’s eyes widened. “How did you know it was — no, never mind,” he quickly cut himself off. “I have to change?”

“If that’s one of our jumpsuits, it’s got silver in it for the antimicrobial properties. It would interfere with the x-rays,” Jack explained.

Phantom sighed. “Fine.”

Jack and Maddie shared a victorious look. Phantom wasn’t even trying to deny where his suit had come from. “How did you end up with the custom suit design?” Maddie asked him.

“I dunno. Same ghost magic that fixes it every time it gets cut up, I guess,” Phantom replied. “Well — the logo was actually an ally’s design. And suggestion. But the rest of it just decided by itself to look like this.”

Fascination took hold of Jack. “A Fenton invention imbued with spectral energy! Can I look at it while you’re getting your scan?”

“Most of your inventions are imbued with spectral energy. What do you think your ecto-batteries do?” Phantom told him.

“Well, yeah, but — I know how their circuitry works. They were designed to do that.”

Phantom leaned his head back against the wall and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “I mean, I’m not going to stop you.”

Jack frowned. “Aren’t you curious how it works?” he asked. Phantom had told them he liked physics, and Jack didn’t see how that could be possible without a healthy dose of scientific curiosity.

Phantom merely shrugged. “There are a lot of ghost things I don’t understand. I’ve learned how to be okay with not understanding.” He gave Jack a pointed look. “Sometimes you have to be okay with not understanding something if you want to be respectful and kind.”

Before Jack could work out whether or not that was a rebuke, the radiologists arrived.

Maddie stood. Phantom sat up straighter.

“Hello!” greeted the purple-haired radiologist whose steel name tag proclaimed them Dr. Rahayu, they/them. The younger radiologist with them didn’t have a matching name tag.

Dr. Rahayu turned to Jack and Maddie with a professional smile. “Doctors Fenton?” they asked, reaching out to shake first Jack’s hand, then Maddie’s. “I’m Taman Rahayu. This is my assistant Kevin. It’s nice to meet you in person.”

Jack honestly couldn’t recall a single name from the many exchanged emails, so he was grateful that Dr. Rahayu had spoken first. “Likewise!” Jack responded.

Dr. Rahayu turned to Phantom, who was still sitting. “It’s good to see you again as well, Phantom,” they said, offering their hand to the ghost.

Phantom’s face took on a mildly panicked oh no where do I know them from expression, and Dr. Rahayu chuckled. “I helped run Amity Park Pride last year,” they explained.

“Oh,” said Phantom, taking their hand. “Was your hair green then?”

“It was, yes. Good memory!” Dr. Rahayu smiled winningly, and Phantom smiled back more shyly, but genuinely.

Jack stared. He’d assumed that the humbler, more hesitant side of Phantom was something that Phantom was playing up specifically for the Fentons — not that it was false, exactly, just that it wasn’t a major part of the ghost’s personality. But now someone else who apparently knew him was in the room, and his cocky, confident “hero” persona hadn’t reappeared. Maybe … maybe Phantom wasn’t putting up a front around the Fentons now, but rather dropping one.

How often had Jack seen Phantom outside the context of a ghost fight, before their alliance?

“I’m sorry I didn’t stay for very long,” Phantom told Dr. Rahayu.

The doctor waved this off. “No, no. It meant a lot to people that you came, even briefly. We all know you’re busy. I’ll try not to keep you long today, yeah?”

“Uh.” Phantom swallowed uncomfortably. “Actually, could we, uh. Could we go as slowly as possible without messing up the data? If that’s okay?” He took in the radiologists’ surprised expressions and explained, “I might need to, well, ectoplasm’s pretty volatile, and I know from my — from the Fenton’s research that this amount of radiation won’t make me explode or anything, but I might need to replace ectoplasm as we go to avoid getting, like, extreme ghost cancer.”

Dr. Rahayu’s expression turned to horror.

Phantom held his hands up. “It shouldn’t hurt anything! Swapping out ectoplasm isn’t an exothermic process, it’s basically just like how the human body swaps out damaged atoms except on a larger scale and faster, and I’ll be alright in any case, it just won’t take as much time for me to heal up if I do it soon, and I brought some ectoplasm with me to drink if there’s a break.”

“You drink ectoplasm?” Maddie asked, fascinated. Jack was equally surprised. The two of them had seen the ghost eat before, but only ever human-safe food.

Phantom shrugged. “It’s quicker than passively absorbing it. For me, anyway.”

“What does it taste like?”

Phantom scratched his head. “Like someone took ranch dressing in a weird new direction?”

“Um,” said Dr. Rahayu, blinking out of their temporary stupor. “Kevin. Could you go over the CT equipment with the Fentons? I’ll finish up here and be along in a moment.”

Kevin more or less herded Jack and Maddie out of the room.

Jack shared a look with his wife and saw his own conflict over whether to object reflected in her eyes. For Jack, the objection remained unvoiced because he suddenly couldn’t tell whether he wanted to object to a doctor with no ghost-hunting equipment or training being left alone in a room with a class seven ghost, or to the Fentons’ young ally being left alone in a room with lots of medical equipment and a research doctor unfamiliar with ghost physiology. Jack wondered what kept Maddie’s objection similarly unvoiced.

“Right, so,” Kevin said, guiding them into the CT room and gesturing to the big donut-shaped scanner. “As the x-rays from different angles come in, the computerized tomography system will collate them into virtual ‘slices’ that we can view on this screen …”

Jack and Maddie nodded along. The CT system was certainly interesting, but it wasn’t a piece of ecto-engineering, so Jack had a hard time paying attention. Analyzing the CT scan would be Dr. Rahayu’s job. He and Maddie would be left with the task of theorizing what the internal structures revealed by the scan were made of and did. The CT scan probably wouldn’t provide much information on Phantom’s core, since spectral energy reacted far less to radiation than to, say, electric currents, but combining today’s scan with the MRI they were hoping to get next week might yield data on the relationship between the ghost’s core and physical body.

Dr. Rahayu came in a couple of minutes later, shaking their head in a fond sort of way. “You two must know some really good ice cream joints,” they told the Fentons, nonsensically. “Right. Kevin, we’ll be starting with the abdominal area, since he’ll want to start taking in ectoplasm after the first few images.”

“That will likely be the hardest area to image,” Maddie warned. “A ghost’s central core is usually near its center of mass at rest. Spectral energy interference will be highest there.”

“We’ll do our best,” promised Dr. Rahayu.

“All good?” Kevin asked the doctor, looking worried.

Dr. Rahayu nodded. “All good.”

“Oh, lovely, an examination table,” said a new voice. The four adults jumped and turned to see Phantom suddenly in the room, having phased through the door without a sound. His eyes were fixed on the long bench running through the center of the donut-shaped scanner. He was wearing the cotton clothes the Fentons had brought, which made the ghost look incongruously casual.

“You change fast,” Dr. Rahayu remarked.

Phantom shrugged. “Intangibility,” he explained, shoving the bundle of his suit into Jack’s arms.

Jack stopped paying much attention to anything else. He was herded back out of the room to give everyone else more space, and he spent the next however long going over Phantom’s suit with what equipment he’d been able to fit into his bag. The suit material was undoubtedly Fentonworks make. The faint ectosignature it gave off was stronger from the inside than the outside, and Jack was left wondering how closely intertwined it was with Phantom’s body when the ghost had it on. There was no obvious circuitry, but its power had to be drawn from the ghost himself: the small nick that Jack made in the arm to test its self-mending abilities remained there for the whole time he studied the suit, presumably because the suit’s ghostly power source was absent.

Jack poked his head back in after a while to ask Maddie if he could run out to the GAV to test whether Phantom’s suit stood up to ectoblasts better than a standard Fenton jumpsuit.

The radiologists were obviously taking a break. Phantom was sitting on the examination bench and chugging ectoplasm from a faintly glowing travel mug while Maddie had some argument with Kevin about the ectoplasm-safe contrast dye she’d brought. Dr. Rahayu was staring engrossed at a computer screen.

Phantom was the first to notice Jack. He reached out to tap Kevin on the shoulder. “He can do it,” he said, pointing a thumb at Jack.

Kevin looked over at Jack. “Is it that different from sticking a human? I mean, the scans so far —”

Oh, so the argument was about who ought to administer the contrast for the next round of scans. “You bet!” Jack interrupted. “You’ve gotta go through the aura fast to make contact, then slow down right away so you don’t punch through.”

Maddie looked over at him, brimming with excitement. “Jack, look at these scans! There’s so much structure, and you can see where the central core must be based on the areas of highest intangibility. Anything that gets shapeshifted can’t hold still well enough to get as good of a scan, but you can still see the effects of the core’s power spreading to shapeshifted areas.”

“Huh!” Jack followed his wife’s instruction as Dr. Rahayu turned a screen towards him. Wow, that looks almost human, except for the fuzzier middle. He bit back a comment about wanting samples from the various organs depicted. Noninvasive scans, that was what they were doing. Noninvasive scans.

“Jack, honey, could you inject the contrast so I can monitor how it takes?” Maddie asked.

“Sure!” Jack agreed. They had never tried the contrast on any ghost above complexity class three before; it was probably a good idea to have one of them free to monitor how Phantom reacted to it.

Phantom finished off the ectoplasm in the mug he was holding. “Round two, electric boogaloo, now with needles,” he muttered, but he set down his mug and pushed his right shirtsleeve up without protest. Jack assumed all was well until he took the ghost’s elbow. He stopped.

Phantom was shaking.

“You okay?” Jack asked.

“Fine,” said Phantom, unconvincingly.

Jack frowned. “Are you sure? Maddie, is he stable?” He turned his head to his wife.

“Should be,” said Maddie. Her eyebrows furrowed, and she double-checked the readouts on her spectral scanner. “Certainly seems to be.”

“Is everything okay?” asked Dr. Rahayu.

Phantom sighed. “I’m fine. I’m just not big on injections.”

Dr. Rahayu’s eyes fixed on … Phantom’s hands? Jack looked that way too and was suddenly reminded of the signals he and Maddie had worked out with the ghost on Thursday to help them all determine whether one of them was being controlled or overshadowed, in the event of strange behavior. Had the radiologist worked out a private signal with Phantom during their few minutes alone?

Regardless, Phantom’s hands remained still, and Dr. Rahayu eventually said, “Well, it’ll be over soon. Close your eyes and think of the ice cream.”

Phantom shut his eyes and gave a tight smile. “Thinking of it.”

The contrast injection went smoothly. Jack might clumsy with broad movements, but after decades of soldering ectoweapon parts, his fine motor control was top-notch. When a few minutes had passed and Phantom was less shaky and still giving off stable readings, the room began to feel overcrowded again, and Jack retreated out to the GAV.

Phantom’s suit stood up so well to the small ectoblasts that Jack could test on it that Jack was left wondering whether wearing it retarded the ghost’s own powers as well. Maybe Phantom turned his gloves intangible if he needed an especially powerful ectoblast? Or else, had the suit itself developed ecto-diode properties over time, letting ghostly energy out more easily than in? Maddie still had the spectral energy scanner, so Jack couldn’t measure the strength of ectoblasts shot through the ghost’s suit from each side of the fabric. He settled for testing tensile strength instead. The suit’s high degree of stretchiness was its most obvious deviation so far from a typical Fenton jumpsuit, aside from its color.

“Please tell me you didn’t just turn my whole suit into Swiss cheese,” said Phantom, and Jack jumped to find the ghost suddenly hovering beside him and Maddie a few steps away.

“Only a couple of small holes!” Jack promised. Phantom held his hands out, and Jack reluctantly gave the suit back. Maybe he could run more tests on it next week.

“So, ice cream?” Maddie asked as Phantom pulled his suit on and then phased the cotton clothes out from under it.

The ghost shrugged. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“Oh yeah; what was that about?” asked Jack.

Phantom handed Jack the borrowed outfit. “Taman just wanted to make sure I wasn’t being coerced, or anything,” he explained. “I told them it was like a kid with a fear of needles getting their tetanus shot. Scary, painful in the short term, might be beneficial in the long term, everyone goes out for ice cream afterwards.”

Jack remembered his own kids’ tetanus shots. Jazz had been stoic throughout and had only sniffled once they were out of the clinic and her frozen reward was in her hands. Danny had kept demanding larger and larger promised quantities of ice cream the whole time and had ended up eating so much of it afterwards that he’d made himself sick. And then he’d played up how sore his arm was and asked for even more. Jack smiled at the memory.

“Well, where do you want to go for ice cream?” Maddie asked with a smile of her own.

Phantom blinked at her. “Actually?”

“You made it through the scary medical thing,” said Maddie.

“Yeah, and I’ve got ectoplasm aftertaste to wash out of my mouth and all, but you don’t have to —”

“The Creepy Creamery!” Jack burst out. “We haven’t tried their triple-fudge flavor since it came in!”

“I doubt it will be that different from their double-fudge, honey,” said Maddie.

“It’ll be better! More fudge makes everything better! You’ll see!”

Phantom smiled. “Well, if you’re buying. Meet you there?”

“Want a ride?” asked Jack.

“No offense, but that thing is called the Ghost Assault Vehicle for a reason,” said Phantom. “I’ll fly.” He shot up and phased through the roof of the parking garage.

Jack didn’t need to ask Maddie how the rest of the CT scan had gone. She started rambling about it as soon as they were in the GAV.

“Oh, Jack, he was so cooperative. We should have tried something like this ages ago. He went invisible as soon as we asked, and he didn’t show up on those scans at all. I’m almost certain now that invisibility comes from ghosts completely ceasing to interact with electromagnetic radiation, rather than just shifting out of the human visual range. And the shapeshifting — he seemed less comfortable doing that one? Maybe it’s more difficult for him — but with the contrast, you can see his soft tissues dissolving and reforming when he does it. Dr. Rahayu plans to analyze those scans more and send us their results. Oh, and apparently Phantom does need to breathe, but he can hold his breath for almost ten minutes. I wonder if oxygen exchange is common to all high-complexity ghosts? It might be more unique to him; his heart and lungs are very well-defined, and his ectoplasm samples had so much more structure than Ember’s did. I can’t wait to get an MRI: I suspect we’ll be able to see his core directly on the scan!”

“Neat!” said Jack.

Maddie gave a self-satisfied smile. “And I think Phantom was interested in the data. More than he let on. He kept asking questions.”

“Ha! A ghost ectoscientist!” Jack took a right turn onto Stanley Street. The Creepy Creamery wasn’t far from the medical complex. Its main customers were university students. “Well, I guess he’s already a ghost ghost-hunter.”

Maddie was silent a moment. Then she said, “His skeleton showed a lot of past fractures. And a handful of breaks. All healed nicely, of course.”

“Of course.” Give a ghost with a stable core access to fresh ectoplasm, and it could heal from just about anything. They were such resilient creatures once they stabilized. Almost, the sheer amount of fights among ghosts made sense: what better way to generate a bunch of emotional energy than a knock-down, drag-out fight, if it wasn’t going to deal you lasting damage?

Maddie pursed her lips. “Jack … are we Phantom’s doctors now? He comes to us if he gets too badly hurt to deal with it himself, like last Saturday? I got the impression that that’s what he implied to Dr. Rahayu.”

“Huh,” said Jack. He hadn’t thought about that. “Well, I guess we’re more qualified than anyone else. Especially now that we’re learning what he’s supposed to look like inside. Man, no wonder he wanted an alliance with us!”

Silence reigned as Jack wondered what Phantom’s plan in the case of a true medical emergency had been prior to this week. Had he had one? … Had it been to come to the Fentons anyway and hope for the best? He’d relaxed so quickly when Jack had started helping him last Saturday.

“He’s … wanted that for a long time, hasn’t he,” Maddie said quietly, and Jack wondered how many of their past interactions with the ghost boy were running through her mind.

Jack thought back to the first time he’d ever made a deal with Phantom. He hadn’t enjoyed having to work with a ghost, but it had still been so easy, because Phantom had taken right away to working with a ghost hunter. With Jack.

“Yeah,” Jack agreed.

The Creepy Creamery hove into view. There were no obvious floating, glowing ghost boys in the vicinity. Jack parked and walked over to the windows with Maddie to peer inside; still no sign of Phantom.

“Huh,” said Maddie. “Where do you think he —”

“Boo,” said Phantom, popping into visibility right between the two of them.

Maddie and Jack both jumped back. Phantom laughed hard, clutching his stomach. His suit, Jack noted, was fully repaired.

“Phantom!” Maddie chided. Her hands slowly fell away from the weapons at her belt.

Phantom just grinned at her. “Get used to it if you ever want to meet Danielle. She does that all the time,” he warned them.

“Has she ever gotten you?” Jack asked.

“Oh, yeah,” said the ghost, smiling fondly. “Basically every single visit.”

He was talking to them about his family. That was a good sign. “How’d you wind up with a ghost cousin, anyway?” asked Jack.

Phantom’s head tilted to the side. “It’s, uh, it’s complicated. I’ll explain it to you some other time,” he told them. “Right now I want ice cream.” He bounced on his toes as eagerly as any kid who’d been promised a treat.

“Well, let’s get ice cream, then,” Maddie said warmly, pulling the door open and ushering them inside.

There was a short line in front of the serving counter. Every person in line, and both servers, stopped to stare at the three of them as they walked in. One person’s order halted mid-sentence.

Phantom hurriedly held up his hands. “No ghost attack, just here for ice cream,” he assured the crowd.

That was probably the right thing to say. It felt like the wrong one, though, because a moment later more than half of the crowd was surging towards them with questions and comments and photo requests.

“… And this would be why I don’t get out much,” Phantom muttered.

Maddie stepped in front of the ghost and held up her own hands.

Maddie Fenton was not the brick wall that her husband was, but she could project an air of you shall not pass through stance alone better than anyone else Jack knew. “Now, now,” she said sweetly to the predominantly college-aged gaggle of Phantom fans, “I’m sure you’re all capable of letting your town’s ghost hunters enjoy a bit of ice cream in peace.”

The crowd fell back, for the most part, and Phantom stared at Maddie with open admiration.

One small and fearless girl broke from the group and dodged around Maddie to tackle Phantom in a waist-height hug. “Phantom!” she squealed. “D’you remember me?”

“Um,” said Phantom.

“You flew me at the playground!”

“Oh, right! Uh … was it Sasha?”

“Yep!” Sasha confirmed with a nod vigorous enough to make all of her braids bounce.

“You’re offering playground rides now?” Jack asked.

Phantom winced. “It seemed fair. I’d kind of broken their playground’s swingset.”

“It’s okay, the mayor fixed it! And he made it bigger too!” Sasha told them.

“Great,” said Phantom, his smile turning forced, “that’s great. Hey, speaking of getting bigger, you’re taller than you were the last time I saw you, aren’t you?” he asked the girl.

Sasha gave another vigorous nod. “Yeah! I’m five now; it’s my birthday!”

“Sasha, it’s not your birthday till Tuesday,” broke in a woman with two cups of ice cream in hand who looked to be Sasha’s mom. “Come here, baby; let’s let them have their ice cream and focus on ours.”

“But I want him to fly me again!” Sasha protested.

“Uh,” said Phantom, wavering.

Sasha saw the waver and pounced on it. “Pleeeease? It’s almost my birthday! I wanna fly again! I’m gonna be a pilot when I grow up!”

“Baby, you can’t ask him to fly you when he’s not offering,” Sasha’s mom put in, but Sasha had already won. Phantom offered a hand, and she grabbed it eagerly.

The ghost shot a brief look at the girl’s mom. “Maybe a quick one?”

The woman chuckled. “Don’t go far.”

“Yaaaaay!” Sasha squealed as Phantom knelt down next to her.

“Alright,” Phantom told her seriously. “You remember the rules? Deep breaths, no grabbing at anything, squeeze my hand if we’re getting too high for you?”

“Yep!”

“Well, then.” The ghost grinned, and the two began to float. A few of the onlookers gasped. “Copilot, prepare for takeoff!”

They didn’t go very high, nor very far. Phantom phased them out to the sheltered outdoor seating area and flew the girl in a few lazy circles around it, staying low enough to keep them easily in sight of Sasha’s mother. Sasha looked delighted anyway.

“I was glad to hear about your alliance,” Sasha’s mother abruptly said from behind the Fentons.

Jack and Maddie both turned to look at her. Rather unfortunately, the first thing that made its way out of Jack’s mouth was, “He broke your swingset?”

“Got smashed through it while he was busy shielding the kids, more like,” the woman said with a snort. “Don’t care what the mayor said about it; the boy was clearly trying his best. He could use some more backup.” She eyed the Fentons. “Hope we’ll see you giving it to him, from now on.”

Several of the surrounding Creepy Creamery patrons nodded at that.

We never get that kind of public support, Jack silently lamented. Well, Phantom was a force of personality that was hard for almost anyone to match, Jack supposed; even with years of ectoscience study under his belt and a Specter Deflector around it, Jack had been drawn into liking Phantom, and the general public could hardly be expected to fare differently. … And the Fentons spending the last couple of years shooting at a friendly kid-shaped ghost who rarely shot back probably hadn’t helped their public image either.

The ice cream line crept forward. Phantom returned with Sasha shortly before it was the Fentons’ turn to order.

Sasha was still hovering, Phantom’s hand on her back, and giggling. “Mama, look, look! I’m a ghost!”

“Hey, now, don’t get ahead of yourself,” Phantom told her as they touched down onto the checkered floor tiles. “You’ve got a lot of life left to live. And lots of planes to fly. Being a ghost will be way more fun if you’ve lived a long, full life first, trust me. If you take good care of yourself and make it to, like, ninety, then I’ll teach you how to do loop-de-loops if I see you in the Ghost Zone after, okay?”

“Okay!” Sasha agreed.

The girl ran back to her mother, and the two waved goodbye as they stepped outside to eat their ice cream. Phantom stared distantly after her. The Fentons stared distantly at him.

“Um, can I take your order …?” the ice cream server asked, breaking through their respective reveries.

“Right!” said Jack. “I’ll have two scoops of the triple-fudge in a cup!”

“A waffle cone of cherry fudge chunk,” said Maddie.

Phantom tapped his thigh in thought. “What’s the most expensive thing you’ve got?” he asked. He pointed a thumb at the Fentons. “They’re buying.”

The server gave him a smile. “Is that so?”

Phantom grinned. “Yep, ice cream’s the traditional way to seal a ghost-ghost hunter alliance.”

“I don’t remember hearing anything about you and Huntress dropping by last fall,” the server said mock-accusingly.

“Red prefers her ice cream homemade.”

The ice cream server laughed. “Well, if you’re going for pricey, I’d have to recommend a three-scoop milkshake.”

“Sounds great.”

“What flavor?”

“Um … what have you got that’s just this side of too sickeningly sweet to stomach?”

Ah, a ghost after Jack’s own heart.

“Hm.” The server looked over the flavors. “One scoop birthday cake sprinkle, two scoops cotton candy?”

“Perfect.”

The server hesitated, ice cream scoop in hand, and cast a quick glance at Maddie before looking back to Phantom. “I, uh, do have to at least ask if we can get a photo of you with your milkshake for the wall. My manager is gonna flip.”

“Oh, sure,” Phantom agreed.

The request had probably been for a picture just of Phantom or else of Phantom with the staff who were currently working, but Phantom ended up pulling in the Fentons, the staff, and all of the milling college students who’d tried for a photo op earlier. They drew lots to choose who would take the photograph and therefore miss out on being in it.

The ghost asked Jack and Maddie afterward if they wanted to go up on the roof to eat, for the privacy, and when they agreed, he handed Maddie his milkshake and flew them directly up through the ceiling.

A wave of cold washed over Jack as he was rendered intangible. Warmth returned a moment later, and Phantom set them down on their feet.

The roof of the Creepy Creamery was flat enough to be comfortable, if a bit noisy from all of the HVAC equipment. It was low enough that Jack and Maddie could easily have jumped down if they’d needed to but not so low as to make them visible from ground level if they were sitting down. Jack and Maddie sat down.

“Whew.” Phantom flopped onto his back in midair. He flipped over a moment later and reached out for his milkshake.

Maddie handed it to him. “Downsides to everyone seeing you as the town hero?” she asked wryly.

“Not everyone,” Phantom pouted. He sipped his shake. “Mmm. Sugar. Overall, the reputation is pretty useful, since it means people listen to me in a crisis, which makes it way easier to get them out of harm’s way. I guess you can see why I stay invisible a lot of the time, though.” He took a much longer sip. “Mmm. Brainfreeze immunity has got to be one of the best parts of being a ghost.”

“How’s the shake?” asked Jack.

“Awesome,” Phantom told him. “I’m really glad I asked for a flavor suggestion. My first impulse had been to get rocky road for the thematic appropriateness, since I’d said that we’re celebrating the alliance.”

Jack laughed. Phantom grinned.

Maddie swallowed a bite of waffle cone. “Did you really make ice cream with the Red Huntress?” she asked.

“Sort of?” Phantom shrugged. “You know those ice cream maker balls, where you put the ingredients in and throw it around a lot until they turn into ice cream? I’d been telling Red for months that she needed to find something better to work out her aggression on, so I got her one of those as a replacement when she officially took me off her ‘punching bag’ list.”

“And … then you made ice cream together?”

“Well, she chucked it at my head and I froze it, so ice cream was achieved.” Phantom grinned again and drank his milkshake.

They ate in comfortable silence (save for the whirring of fans) for a little while. Jack had to admit that the extra dose of fudge in his ice cream had not resolved the issue of it still tasting less fudgy than fudge itself, but he could always make up for that disappointment by eating fudge when he got home.

Maddie chewed slowly on a chunk of fudge from her own ice cream. She glanced at Phantom as she swallowed it. “You and Huntress seemed to move on from your past rather quickly,” she said, her voice hesitant enough that Jack was left wondering whether Huntress was really who Maddie was asking about.

“I guess.” The ghost studied his milkshake cup. Swirls of frost spread outward from his fingers along the plastic curve. “I’d stopped being mad at her a while before we allied. She was still mad, at first, but then her anger got all wrapped up with guilt, and … I dunno, one of my other allies who’s good at talking people through things talked her through it. Slash, might still be talking her through it. The alliance probably looks less messy from the outside, since Red and I already knew how to fight together, so that bit was easy.”

Maddie exchanged a glance with Jack. “What made you first stop being mad at her?” she asked.

“Honestly? She kinda reminded me of, well, me,” Phantom answered, gazing off in the direction of the town park. “I wasn’t much better than Red when I started out, really. I mean, I didn’t even have the whole being-a-ghost-now thing figured out before I went, ‘Hey, I have ghost powers, I should use them to fight off all the other ghosts who try to come to Amity Park.’ ‘Punch first, ask questions later’ was basically my modus operandi for months.”

“Hah! You’re a Fenton at heart, Ghost Boy,” Jack said with a laugh.

Phantom turned and stared at him as if stunned by revelation. Then he started laughing too, high and loud and unrestrained, and Jack felt warmth fill his chest. He’d always liked people who found his own laughter infectious.

Phantom wiped glowing tears from his eyes. “Oh, man. But, uh, to finish answering your question,” he said to Maddie, “I think I just save up all my anger for the people who actually deserve it, now. Most everyone is jerk sometimes — I know I am — but a lot of people grow out of it eventually, and the ones who don’t mostly fade into mere nuisances after a while.”

“So who are you angry at?” Maddie asked.

The ghost shrugged uncomfortably. “Well, Pariah Dark. Practically the whole Ghost Zone hates that guy,” he told them. “And Freakshow, I guess, but at least he’s in jail now.”

“Got anyone you hate who comes around Amity Park regularly?” asked Jack. That would be a good thing for them to know, if some visitor or resident was likely to send Phantom flying into a rage.

Phantom sighed. “There’s a handful that I really don’t like. I’m not going to make a list.”

“Who would be at the top of it if you did?” Maddie pressed.

Phantom grimaced. “Between Masters and Plasmius? It’s really hard to say.”

“Hey! Vladdie’s a good guy!” protested Jack.

“Yeah, stalker-y billionaire politicians are famous for their great moral character,” said Phantom, rolling his eyes. “I’m not gonna attack him or anything; I just really dislike him.”

“Because he claims that you’re a menace?” Maddie asked, her mouth twitching towards a smile.

Phantom huffed and crossed his arms. “Well, that’s part of it.”

Maddie chuckled.

“What?” Phantom grumped.

“You sounded so wise a moment ago,” Maddie explained. “And now …”

“What, I thought that’s what being a teenager was like for everyone? Occasional bouts of wisdom surrounded by a whole lot of being dumb? Anyway,” Phantom flipped himself to a standing position, his feet hovering just a few inches above the roof. “I did promise myself I would spend the afternoon catching up on sleep, so. Do you guys need a hand getting down from here?”

“Nope!” Jack assured him. Beside him, Maddie shook her head.

“Alright,” said Phantom. “See you around, then. Thanks for the chill session!” He shot off into the sky.

“Ha!” Jack chuckled after him. He turned to Maddie to see what she thought of the latest Phantom parting pun, but her face only looked somber as she stared after the dwindling shape of the ghost. “Mads?”

Quietly, Maddie said, “He really is a teenager, isn’t he? A … a recently deceased teenager.”

Jack sobered. “Yeah,” he agreed.

“He’s a kid. Who’s been trying to reach out for help.”

Jack’s gut felt colder than the ice cream alone could explain. “Yeah.”

“Oh, Jack,” Maddie breathed shakily, “we don’t know how to look out for a teenage ghost. We’re ghost hunters! What did we just get ourselves into?”

Jack put his arm around his wife’s shoulders, and Maddie leaned into him. He pulled her tight. “Well,” he said, “we were hoping just this morning that we could get Phantom to trust us.”

Maddie laughed without humor. “We never stopped to think of what that would mean, did we?”

The little ghost gasping in relief when the collar came off and falling against Jack, curling into him, like being in Jack’s arms meant safety, shelter, refuge. Drifting off to sleep as Jack watched over him. Blearily but unguardedly rubbing his eyes at Maddie and Jack like a child being woken for school.

Jack swallowed. “I think,” he said, his voice faint, “I think maybe I did.”

Chapter Text

Danny was hauled bodily from sleep by a fist bunched into his shirt. He blinked his eyes open and threw a hand onto the mattress behind him for support.

Sam frowned down at him.

“Some people,” Danny muttered, rubbing his eyes with his other hand, “might think to wake their partner up with a kiss.”

“Some people don’t have partners who chugged ectoplasm for lunch,” Sam fired back. She let go of his shirt. “Are you up now? We need to check your semi-vital signs.”

“What’s this ‘we’ business?” said Tucker, behind her.

Sam rolled her eyes. “Tucker, your guest bedroom didn’t turn into a hospital just because I brought in a blood pressure monitor. Grow up; you’re the note-taker.”

“The record-keeper and tech administrator most vital to the functioning of our team, I think you mean.”

“Yeah, the note-taker.”

Danny yawned while he listened to the familiar banter. Late afternoon sunlight was filtering in through the window, so he must have been asleep for a few hours. He would need to get ready for Ember’s concert soon, but he should have time left to eat dinner first.

Sam fit the finicky blood pressure monitor’s cuff over Danny’s arm and stuck a pulse oximeter onto his finger. Danny reached for his phone with his free hand. He’d texted Valerie before his nap to let her know that he was alright, just tired, and he should update her now that he was awake and more rested.

To his surprise, Valerie had messaged him in the meantime.

Val the Red: “Phantom and the Red Huntress reportedly sealed their own alliance with homemade ice cream” I am going to chuck that stupid ball at your head again

Danny smiled and typed a reply.

You: Fill it up first, we’ll get more ice cream that way :)
I didn’t know you knew the Creepy Creamery folks?

The blood pressure cuff squeezed tight around his upper arm.

“Who’re you messaging?” Tucker asked Danny.

“Valerie,” Danny answered. “Just letting her know I’m up and she doesn’t have to do the Ember concert or anything.”

“Yeah, we’ve got it covered!” At least Tucker enjoyed helping with Ember’s concerts, despite his being perma-banned from the stage itself.

“Ninety over sixty,” Sam read out. Tucker noted the information on his PDA. “And sixty-two bpm.”

“So, normal,” Danny replied.

“Normal for you, when you’ve been slacking on your workouts. Otherwise, just barely high enough to keep you from a new diagnosis. Hold still while I take your temperature.”

Tucker looked thoughtful, as far as Danny could see from the turned-away-from-the-medical-happenings angle of his face. “Huh. D’you think Valerie might want to come to the concert unofficially? Just to have a good time, let loose a little?”

Danny raised his eyebrows. Tucker hadn’t made any moves in Valerie’s direction in the year since she and Danny had briefly dated. Tucker’s romantic attention for the past several months had been focused on his fellow student council members — he had pulled off some noteworthy school tech upgrades since he’d taken the open treasurer position — but as far as Danny knew, Tucker’s technological and increasing political prowess had yet to win him dates from that group.

“I don’t think she likes Ember’s music,” Danny said.

“Man, too bad,” said Tucker. “Does she like any arcade games? Or fantasy or horror movies?”

Danny sighed. “I don’t think she’s single at the moment, either.”

Sam snorted. Danny had shared his suspicions with Sam that Valerie and Jazz’s ghost-hunting partnership was growing romantic, and Sam probably knew more than he did at this point. Jazz had never said anything outright to him about it, probably because Danny would then be obligated by the sibling code to tease her about going after his ex. Neither Danny nor Sam had yet mentioned it to Tucker, mainly because Tucker would then be obligated by the bro code to tease Danny about being passed over for his preppy sister.

“Ninety-six point four,” Sam read out. “Good job, Danny; you can still just pass for totally alive.”

“See?” said Danny. “I told you a CT scan would be fine.”

“We don’t know that yet. Go ghost so I can make sure your vitals still pass for a stable coma patient’s that way.”

He tossed his newest phone (thank goodness for Sam’s allowance and Tucker’s data backups) onto the bed and obeyed. The room brightened from his aura’s glow.

“Man, no one’s still single these days,” Tucker lamented, which was patently untrue as far as Casper’s student population went, but Danny supposed it was true in Tucker’s specific social circle.

Danny held a strip of ectophobic wrap in place around his arm while Sam fit the blood pressure cuff over it again. “I can hype you up again the next time I have to drop by the Phan Club?” he offered to Tucker.

“Uh-huh. Would you use my hype speech this time?”

Sam asked, “You mean the one that screams, ‘Tucker wrote this and handed it to Phantom and now we, the most obsessive living teenagers in town, need to stalk Tucker until we find out what kind of leverage he holds over Phantom?’”

“Maybe let Jazz look over the speech first?” Danny suggested, more diplomatically.

“Ugh, she’d psychoanalyze me to shreds,” Tucker whined. “Are you sure Val’s not single?”

Danny thought back to the last hug he’d seen between Jazz and Valerie. “I’m … increasingly sure.”

Sam finished her medical ministrations and pronounced Danny’s ghost form healthy for a comatose human. “Alright, your parents didn’t manage to mess you up. This time.”

“I really don’t think a medical scan is going to be what takes me out, Sam,” Danny told her, changing back to human. “Besides, you want the scan results too.”

“I don’t want to put you through some kind of nightmare to get them! You know you don’t have to do all of this, right? If you tell your parents that you want to stop and they don’t take it well, we’ll have your back.”

“You can officially become a Foley,” Tucker put in.

Danny smiled. “I know,” he said. And he did know. The two of them had had his back since the beginning, and he couldn’t imagine still being passably sane by this point without them. “Thanks, guys. I’ll back out if it gets to be too much, I promise.”

“Because you’re so good at self-preservation,” Sam muttered, but she left it at that.

Danny’s phone screen lit up. He flopped back onto the bed to reply to Valerie.

Val the Red: A) Absolutely not. B) I don’t; the quote’s from the local news.

You: Wait why is it in the news?

Val the Red: Because the Creamery wants five minutes of fame to capitalize on and the news wants to speculate about your alliances, duh. Did getting irradiated earlier fry your last remaining braincells?

You: Couldn’t have, I lost the last one at 14 :’(

Val the Red: Yeah that tracks

You: Anyway the ice cream was really good! We should take Dani there the next time she visits

Val the Red: A) We’re going *as humans* and B) you’re buying

You: Sure thing

Val the Red: Are you sure you won’t need help with the Ember concert? My shift starts soon if I’m going in tonight.

You: Tucker and I have got the concert. Thanks for being on call for the afternoon, I’m feeling a lot better now. Hopefully nothing big came up?

Val the Red: No, it was just as quiet as the rest of the week. I take back what I said about your deal with Skulker being stupid.

You: We’ll see if you still feel that way after all the ghosts who held off last week show up in force this week

Val the Red: Ugh

Danny smiled to himself. The upcoming week probably would be rough, but he had an anti-electricity suit now, and if he needed help, he was going to have Tucker, Sam, Val, Jazz, and his parents to call on: every last ghost hunter in town, standing firmly by his side. For the first time all week, he could sleep easy.

Sam finished packing away her supplies. Tucker sniffed the air and declared his mother’s lasagna ready, and the three of them headed down to eat.

… … …

His head pounded and his whole body twitched and ached with the uncomfortably familiar aftershock of electrocution. That had been a bad one.

The last thing he remembered, he’d been flying in open air. Invisibly. The impact and subsequent shock had come out of nowhere. Who the heck had some kind of ghost-seeking taser missile? In Chicago?

“Subject regaining consciousness, Operative K. Preparing corporeality stimulant.”

Well, that answered that question.

He felt for his core. It was still coursing through him; he was still in ghost form. So far, so good. He tried phasing and felt the familiar drop in pressure from air molecules no longer impacting his skin, but whatever pod-like thing he was in was evidently phase-proof, as were the cuffs around his wrists and … neck, apparently. Less good.

He felt around the inside of the pod-like containment device and blinked his eyes open when its shape started coming into focus. Sure enough, that was a —

“You guys put me in a coffin?” he said aloud. The ectophobic material was transparent rather than wooden, but its shape was unmistakable. “You did. You made me a comedy set piece. I thought displaying a sense of humor was a fireable offense for GIW operatives?”

“It is,” replied the nearest hulking white-clad agent. “Regulation 57A subsection 3.”

“But you’ve got to see how this is funny,” he told them. “And it’s a clear coffin, too, which might make it even funnier? Remains to be seen …”

“Subject is displaying further signs of mental underdevelopment.”

“Hey!” He guessed that last joke had gone over their heads, then.

One of them — this must be O and K, his own personal pair of largely incompetent government stalkers, but he had absolutely no idea which one was which — filled a syringe with a greenish-yellow liquid while the other played with some kind of dark, medical-looking tube thing. Less and less good.

“Nearest facility arrival time is twenty-two minutes,” said O or K. So the weird feeling of motion wasn’t an aftereffect of electric shock; he was in a vehicle.

“Preparing subject for immediate study on arrival,” said K or O, attaching a needle to the syringe.

“You know I have a name, right?” he told them.

“Yes,” answered K or O. The topmost of the coffin thing’s three cover panels was removed. “‘Danny Phantom.’ Hold still.”

“Uh, no thanks?” He went intangible.

A button clicked. Electricity poured through him.

It lasted for only half a second — not long enough to make him pass out again — but he was left panting and unfocused and very, very tangible.

“This will hurt less,” the syringe-wielding GIW operative said blandly, and before his eyes could focus again, there was a pinprick on —

— on his inner elbow, his father holding it gently —

— no, on his shoulder, his elbow was still covered up by the coffin lid. A feeling of coolness coursed through him, followed by one of swelling power, like his core had settled more firmly into his body and its strength was circulating through him at a much higher rate than usual.

“Whoa,” he said. That was some kind of stimulant, alright. “Isn’t the government supposed to be trying to stop teenagers from doing drugs?”

Another click, but no shock this time. Instead, his power started going back down, being pulled out of him at a faster rate than before. “Hey, no fair.” His ghost core still felt over-present and vulnerable, and he wasn’t even getting a boost out of it anymore.

K or O checked the collar over with thickly gloved fingers, then poked his forehead. “Turn invisible.”

“Why would I —”

O or K pointed to the control panel with the electric shock and power-draining buttons.

“Okay, that’s a solid reason,” he admitted, vanishing.

“Good. Turn visible.”

He did.

“Good. Shapeshift your legs —”

“— into a tail for these next scans,” finished his mother, hovering on the edge of his field of vision. She looked up when his breath hitched. “Is that alright?” she asked him. “We want to see how your internal structure changes when you shapeshift —”

“— and abdomen,” finished the GIW operative. He wasn’t on a padded bench; he was in some coffin. His mother wasn’t here. He shapeshifted as instructed.

“Stop. Shapeshift your arms and chest.”

He did, as far as he was able; the handcuffs cut off his shapeshifting right at the point where they covered his wrists. Any ectoblasts he tried to fire out of his hands would probably stop at the handcuffs too, then explode on them. He filed that information away for later.

“Stop. Shapeshift your face.”

He lifted his chin and … tried.

“Shapeshift your face.”

“I can’t.” Why couldn’t he? The collar wasn’t cutting his powers off as much as the handcuffs were: he could still change the shape of his neck, if not enough to shake the collar itself. He should be able to do the same with his face. Shapeshifting might be easiest around his middle, what with that being the least tangible part of his ghost form, but he’d been able to shapeshift his whole body for ages now — not well enough to disguise himself as someone else (he was no Amorpho), but certainly well enough to dodge around projectiles. Now he couldn’t even get his forehead to shift out of the way of K or O’s poking finger.

“Shapeshift your face.”

“I don’t know how else to say this: I can’t shapeshift my face right now. I don’t know why. Would you quit poking me? I got enough of that from kindergarten bullies to last my whole afterlife.”

He got another poke in the forehead for that. Forget the electric handcuffs; he went intangible.

… Or tried to. Nothing happened.

“I can’t phase!”

“Not for the next two hours,” K or O informed him.

“Why? What did you even give me?”

A final poke, and then K or O grunted in satisfaction. “Corporeality stimulant,” came the answer. “You’ll be tied to the physical plane for a while.”

So, no phasing. But why was his facial shapeshifting affected? His strength as a ghost was usually the most concentrated around his face, considering that that was where his ghostly wail came out.

The agents turned away from him to activate some kind of mechanical protective suits and sort through their stowed equipment and talk to each other about Ghost Zone portals. He tested his handcuffs’ resistance to small ectoblasts as discreetly as he could. He would probably need to blast the cuffs at full strength for half a minute to break them, he judged. Doable — only his intangibility and, to some degree, shapeshifting were down for the count — but difficult to do unseen. Maybe he’d wait out the next fifteen or so minutes until they reached their destination, then blast himself free while the two Guys in White were busy climbing out of the vehicle.

K or O turned back to him with some sort of bird-like mask in hand, still babbling on about “reappropriating ghost-accessible portals.”

“The beak is on the wrong side,” he told them. The truncated conical thing was pointing into the curve of the mask rather than out.

“It’s not.”

“What, is it supposed to go into someone’s mouth?”

“Yes.”

Three guesses which someone. “Why?” he asked, more baffled at the moment than afraid. The truncated cone was open at both ends and didn’t look like an effective gag. It would make talking difficult, but it wouldn’t muffle a yell.

“Your face is evidently your current focal point for corporeality. With the stimulant in effect, there will be a direct physical connection from it to your core.”

Oh, so that’s why he couldn’t shapeshift his face. “So, what, you want to …” To force an open pathway through his mouth so they could reach down to his ghost core while it was corporeal enough to probe, he realized. He shuddered. That was just … “Gross. And if I say no?”

A very brief electric shock, more of a warning and an answer than a punishment in itself.

The vehicle acceleration changed, pushing him against the side of his coffin. They were going around a curve, probably an exit ramp.

O or K gripped a ceiling handhold and smiled. “Any last words while you can still speak?”

“Actually, yeah,” he answered. He turned his face towards the side of the vehicle and wailed.

A hand on his forehead. Gentle, not poking.

“Danny. Danny. Shhh. Tell me what’s wrong.”

He stopped wailing — stopped screaming, rather. He was in human form. He could only bring off a ghostly wail as Phantom.

Maurice Foley’s hand pressed against his forehead a little more firmly. “Hey, Danny. Are you hurt?”

“Uhh.” Danny opened his eyes. Tucker’s father’s face leaned over his. For a moment, Danny thought he saw green light reflecting off of it, but he blinked and it was gone. Maurice didn’t look baffled or disturbed the way he almost certainly would have if Danny’s eyes had glowed green, so it had probably been nothing.

Danny tried to take stock of the situation and figure out what to say. He was still in bed, his sheets a twisted and lightly ectoblast-singed mess. His throat was sore.

Maurice asked more specifically, “Are you burned? Or did we, uh, accidentally put the candle-damaged sheets on the guest bed?”

The Foleys had already had a singed set of bedsheets? Well, whatever; Danny was too relieved not to have to invent a plausible fire to question that. “No, I’m not burned. I’m okay. Sorry for … Sorry.” He coughed, then forced in a deep breath. “I hope I didn’t wake everyone else —”

“Is he alright?” said Angela, and “Danny!” said Tucker, both barging into the room now that it was probably clear that neither of them needed to hang back and be ready to call the fire department or the police or, in Tucker’s case, Valerie and Sam and Jazz.

So much for that hope. “I’m okay,” Danny repeated, sitting up. Maurice let go of his forehead. “It was just a nightmare. I’m sorry.”

“Dude.” Tucker’s eyes flicked down to the burnt spots on the bedsheets and then back up to Danny with raised eyebrows, silently questioning the “just.”

“Really,” Danny told him.

Maurice put a hand on Danny’s shoulder. “Can we get you anything? Warm milk, or —”

“Cold water,” Tucker suggested. Cold did tend to soothe Danny more than heat, what with his having an ice core and all.

“Yeah,” Danny agreed. He swallowed. “Cold water would be nice. Thank you, Uncle Maurice.”

If Danny had found it odd to be instructed to call the adults of a family that had only just befriended his own “Aunt” and “Uncle” back when he was six, he’d spent far too much time at the Foley home over the past nine years to question it any longer. Maurice was easily more of an uncle to him than Vlad, who actually did go way back with Danny’s parents.

Maurice left to get the ice water, and Angela said she would fetch an undamaged set of bedsheets.

“It’s alright; I don’t mind —” Danny tried to stop her.

“Then I’ll just leave them on the chair in case you change your mind,” Angela sidestepped. She left, closing the door behind her.

Tucker didn’t waste a second before taking advantage of their being alone. “Really no ghosts?” he demanded at once.

“Really no ghosts,” Danny confirmed. “I’m sorry, Tuck; I was trying to blast out of handcuffs in the nightmare, and I guess I ectoblasted the bed in real life. Hopefully it’s only the sheets that got damaged …” He tried to pull back the sheets to check on the mattress, but Tucker put his hands over Danny’s own to stop him.

“Seriously, don’t worry about it,” Tucker told him. “It’s fine. You sure you’re okay, bro?”

“I … yeah.” Danny exhaled slowly. “I’m okay.”

Tucker hesitated a moment before asking, “So, uh, not the accident, then?”

There hadn’t been any ectoblasts or handcuffs involved in the portal accident. It was rare that Danny had screaming nightmares, but when he did, that was usually what they were about.

Danny shook his head. “No. It was just the Guys in White thing from last weekend.”

“Yeesh.” Tucker grimaced and shook his head. “Man, I really should’ve thought of what would happen if your NotiFoley got fried, considering how fast you go through phones. We’ve gotta get you something that’ll send an alert out to us if it gets destroyed.”

Danny frowned. “Wouldn’t anything like that need regular contact with a GPS system, not just the ability to connect with one in an emergency?”

“It can be separate from the NotiFoley you use with your parents,” said Tucker.

Danny sighed. “Honestly, I’m less worried about my mom’s hacking than Vlad’s.” Clearing Vlad’s surveillance tech out of Fentonworks and their personal possessions was a regular activity for Team Phantom these days, or rather, for the Ghost Getters. (Danny was fine with Valerie not wanting to call the expanded group that included her and Jazz “Team Phantom,” but he still couldn’t believe that she’d backed Jazz up on the name “Ghost Getters” instead. A superhero team ought to have at least a marginally cool name.) Tucker had been permanently disabling any GPS capabilities on their phones ever since Sam had first gotten a phone that had any.

“Speaking of hacking,” Tucker began.

“Tuck, no,” Danny cut him off. “No hacking government agencies. We don’t need the FBI after us too!”

“Alright, alright,” Tucker huffed in a not-very-reassuring tone. Danny frowned. Tucker poked Danny in the stomach. “But if you ever disappear on us for real, I’m taking the GIW down one data cache at a time. Just try and stop me.”

Despite himself, Danny smiled. “I guess I’d better not get caught again.”

“You’ve got that right.”

Angela knocked before coming back into the room. She brought not one but two sets of bedsheets, with a thin air mattress slung over her shoulder to boot.

“Do you want someone to stay with you for the rest of the night?” Angela asked Danny.

Tucker immediately followed it up with, “I can take the air mattress.”

Danny blinked. Okay, his earlier scream must’ve sounded bad; Tucker was not one to sacrifice his creature comforts.

“Tucker, if anyone’s taking an air mattress, it’s me,” said Danny. Actually, he probably should’ve protested that he didn’t need the company. Not that company wouldn’t help, he always rested easier with someone else nearby, but —

“Danny, you need good sleep more than I do right now,” Tucker argued.

“I’ll sleep fine on the air mattress,” Danny argued back. “It’ll be like camping.”

“Oh, right.” The Foleys were substantially less big on camping than the Fentons were. “Man, I do not get what your family sees in the outdoors. Humans built houses for a reason.”

Danny smiled. “Well, besides the fact that the camping gear my parents make is where most of their money comes from and they get their ideas for it while camping, sometimes it’s just nice to leave it all behind for a little while. To spend time away from modern technology —”

Tucker clutched his PDA protectively to his chest. “Keep the nightmares to yourself, man!”

“Tucker!” Angela chided, but Danny laughed.

Angela shook her head at them. “Danny, Maurice is heating up some chicken noodle soup. A cup of that always makes Tucker sleep better; why don’t you go down and have some while Tucker and I set things up here?”

“I, uh —” Danny was herded out the door before he could finish his protest. It shut behind him, and Angela and Tucker started quietly talking. Danny shook his head and went downstairs.

Maurice handed Danny a glass of ice water without a word when Danny reached the kitchen. Danny drained it, ice and all, while Maurice poured warmed-up soup into a mug and gave it a stir.

“Anything you want to talk about?” Maurice asked as he handed the soup mug over.

“Not really,” said Danny.

“Fair enough,” said Maurice. “I printed out a couple of feel-good articles, if you need something to lift your spirits.”

Danny swallowed a sip of the soup. It was dense with chicken flavor, just the way Tucker must like it, and very filling. The whole mug probably would send him into a sleepy stupor.

Danny glanced at the sheets of paper Maurice had indicated on the table. “Uncle Maurice, I really appreciate it, and I know the nightmare might’ve sounded bad, but it was really just a bad dream. You don’t have to —” He stopped as he caught sight of the article headlines. Right: Valerie had said that his ice cream escapade with his parents had made the local news.

Maurice followed his gaze. He nodded absently. “A long overdue alliance, in my opinion, but — are your parents taking it well?”

“Yeah; why wouldn’t they be?” Danny asked, stiffening just slightly.

“It’s a big change,” Maurice answered evenly. “I know we’ve said it before, but if you ever need a break from the … intensity of Fentonworks, Angela and I will always be happy to have you here.”

Oh, good lord, they thought his parents’ sudden switch from hunting down Phantom to going out for ice cream with him meant that his parents had finally gone off the deep end and that Danny was having nightmares about whatever their next insane move might be.

“No, no, things are fine at home!” Danny said hurriedly. “My parents are actually calmer than they’ve been in a while? I mean, besides being excited about new research data. I think the alliance is going well? Not that they talk about it much — well, except for my dad, everyone knows that he talks about ghosts all the time — but my parents, uh, seem … happy. Things are good, yeah. Honestly, Jazz would probably say that’s why I’m having nightmares; she has this theory about trauma ‘unburying’ itself when you get more stability in your life, uhhh, not that my life was unstable before or that I’m traumatized, or anything —”

“You live in the midst of constant ghost attacks,” Maurice said calmly. “This town has amazing protectors, but I don’t think anyone who lives here is wholly untraumatized.”

“Yeah, well — yeah.” He should stop talking and drink his soup. It was making his chest warm, but in a comfortable way. … Or maybe the warmth was from Maurice’s comment about the town’s protectors.

Maurice set a hand on Danny’s shoulder again. “I’m going to head back upstairs,” he said. “Don’t hesitate to come get us if there’s anything you need, okay?”

“I will,” Danny promised rotely. More earnestly, he added, “Thanks.”

Maurice squeezed his shoulder before letting go.

Danny sat down at the table. Left alone, he read through the article about the Creepy Creamery visit while he finished his mug of soup. Everyone interviewed in it seemed so happy that the new alliance appeared to be going well. He supposed that quotes from cynics or naysayers would have been excluded from an article meant to be feel-good, but it was still nice to be reminded of how much support Phantom had.

He took another sip of soup and ran his fingers around the sides of the Foleys’ “Hello world!” mug.

… To be reminded of how much support both halves of him had.

… … …

Danny felt a lot lighter on his feet by the time he went home — earlier in the day than he’d planned, since the text conversation with Valerie had reminded him of how heavy on ghost fights the coming week was likely to be, and he ought to get as much homework done as he could while it was still the weekend. The sweet aftertaste of the french toast Angela had made them for a late brunch lingered on his tongue, and a copy of a carrot-cheesecake-cookie recipe that Angela had promised to share with his mother was in his bag. Wind whistled past his scooter. This wasn’t quite as fun as flying, but it still felt nice.

There was an unfamiliar car parked at Fentonworks. Another of Jazz’s friends must’ve gotten their own car, he thought. Jazz had been playing chauffeur to her friend group since the summer before her junior year, but with the end of their senior year coming up, that was fast changing. That was probably a good thing. Jazz may be the safest driver in the family, but even she had picked up a few driving tricks from their dad.

Danny made sure that his ghost core was as tucked-away as he could make it without disabling his powers, then stepped cautiously through the front door. No weapons went off at him. It was rare that they did, since his spectral readings like this were about the same as those of a human carrying a few ectobatteries, but safe was better than sorry.

He plunked his backpack down and listened for where his parents were. Down in the lab, from the sound of it: his dad’s booming voice rang up the stairs, followed by the voice of —

Oh no.

Danny raced down the staircase. Yeah, that was Vlad. Vlad in the Fentonworks lab, double “oh no.” Danny should have suspected it when he’d seen the unfamiliar car parked outside: Vlad had needed to replace his car fairly often ever since Danny had told Technus that as far as he was concerned, there was a permanent open season on all machines owned by Vlad.

Vlad was the first of the three people in the lab to look up. His stupid ribbon bow tie fluttered as he turned towards the stairs. “Ah, Daniel, how good of you to join us,” he said with his most condescending smile.

Danny glared back. “What’s going —?”

“Danno! You’re home early!” his dad interrupted in greeting.

“Is everything alright, sweetie?” asked his mom.

“Is there a ghost at the Foley’s house?!” Jack unholstered his ecto-blaster and made to dash upstairs.

“No, no ghost,” Danny told them, which was technically true now that he had left. “We just, uh, finished the movies, and I figured I should get home and knock out as much of my homework for the week as I could.”

“Good thinking, Danny!” beamed his mom. “You go ahead and get to work; we’re all good here. We’ll clean up after we’re done, so you don’t need to worry about the lab.”

“What are you working on? And why is Uncle Vlad here?”

“Why, Daniel, I’m the second-most qualified ectoscientist in the area, you know that,” Vlad told him.

“Third-most,” Danny corrected Vlad, crossing his arms.

Vlad waved this off. “If your parents need someone with a different opinion to look over their data for signs of bias, I am the most natural choice.”

Danny felt a chill that had nothing to do with his ice core. “What. What data?”

“Oh, it seems young Phantom has decided to give the GIW a little treat and sit nicely for some of their contracted-out research. Naturally —”

“What?!”

“Now, Vlad, it’s not a contract; it’s just a grant,” Maddie put in. “We own our own research, so we want to make sure that it’s the best it can be!”

“Yes, don’t fret, your own work is always exceptional, Maddie,” said Vlad. “Billing the research expenses to the federal Ghost Investigation Ward was Jack’s idea, I take it?”

Oh: this must be Vlad attempting to link Jack together with the GIW in Danny’s mind (thanks, Vlad; as if being a research subject to one right after the other wasn’t doing enough of that already), rather than any real concern. Vlad kept a close enough eye on the GIW to have heard about Danny’s brief capture, even though the agency hadn’t publicly announced that they had once again gone after one of the country’s most popular ghosts and had then been inept enough to lose him less than an hour after catching him.

Vlad continued, “We all know how enamored he is with those government incompetents. I suppose that does make sense. One takes after one’s role models, after all.”

At least Vlad was still plenty annoying enough to keep Danny focused on him alone, rather than chewing on what Vlad was saying. “Funny,” said Danny, “I seem to recall my dad being one of the people who’s actually beaten Plas— the Wisconsin Ghost. Thoroughly. Remember that, Dad? He tried to mess with our portal and you threw him around like a wet kitten. He looked about as pathetic as one, too.”

Vlad’s eye twitched.

“You bet I remember, Danny!” Jack said, beaming. He did some boxing punches at the air. “That no-good ghost learned a lesson about messing with Jack Fenton, and if he ever comes near Fentonworks again, I’ll punch him on sight. Say, V-man! Want me to teach you some moves in case that Wisconsin Ghost goes after your lab, too?”

Vlad’s eye-twitch worsened as Jack threw an arm around his shoulder. Vlad pushed him off. “I’m sure I will be alright without your instruction,” he said.

“You can’t be too careful, now, Vlad. That horrid Wisconsin Ghost likes to overshadow people,” Maddie told him.

Vlad grit his teeth, and Danny had to bite his lip to keep from grinning outright. “Yeah, and didn’t the previous mayor get overshadowed while in office?” he reminded them. “Maybe you should wear one of my parents’ Specter Deflectors all the time, Mayor Vlad. You know, just to be safe.”

“Hey, that’s a great idea, Danny!” Jack agreed. “Here, Vladdie —”

“No, no, I couldn’t possibly accept such a precaution for myself before it was implemented school-wide to protect our town’s precious children!” Vlad insisted with a glower in Danny’s direction.

Jack looked down at the refused Specter Deflector he’d fetched. Danny knew those weren’t quick to make. “That might take a while,” Jack admitted.

“Don’t worry about it, Dad; the school’s fine,” said Danny.

“And so is the mayoral office,” insisted Vlad. “We don’t even know for certain that the former mayor was overshadowed, after all. Being overshadowed is a convenient political excuse for an unpopular move, and Mr. Montez is clearly aiming to appeal to fans of Phantom in the next election. You can’t trust the word of a politician.”

“Now that, I agree with. Especially when it comes to politicians named Vlad Masters,” Danny retorted.

“Now, Danny, Vlad is an old friend who came over to do us a favor as a fellow ectoscientist,” said Maddie. She put a defensive hand on Vlad’s shoulder, much to Vlad’s apparent delight, but she removed it when she noticed his reaction.

“What favor, telling you all your data is wrong and you should listen to him instead?” asked Danny.

“On the contrary, dear boy,” said Vlad, clapping his hands together. “I think the conclusion that a detailed humanoid body gives a ghost the capacity to be a more respectable sort is perfectly well thought-through.”

“What? Why — How would that even — Since when do you call Phantom ‘respectable?’” Danny narrowed his eyes. What in the world was Vlad playing at?

“Mm, perhaps I should say, well-intentioned and ultimately capable of good,” said Vlad. Danny narrowed his eyes further. “Daniel, you know that my primary objection to the way things stand with Phantom is how untutored he is. He has a very destructive amount of power that he simply does not know how to use well. I can hardly blame a teenage ghost for a lack of knowledge, only for refusing opportunities to amend that lack and dealing my town dangerous and expensive damages through his ignorance. He needs more oversight, more mentoring in how to manage power held over a small city.”

Right, because Vlad would make such a great mentor.

“Maybe we can talk with him about setting something up,” said Jack.

Yeah, no, that was not happening. “That wasn’t part of your agreement,” Danny grit out. His parents both blinked at him. “Uhhh. Jazz has been talking my ear off about it ever since you let her look through it. And she definitely never mentioned anything like that. Actually, she told me there was a clause against pressuring each other for forms of oversight not outlined in the agreement itself.” And thank you for thinking to put that one in, Jazz, he thought.

“But how old does Phantom seem to you? Fourteen, or so?” Vlad needled.

Almost sixteen, Danny bit back. He was certain Vlad had figured out that being one of the shortest boys in his sophomore class gnawed at him. Danny had put off hormone blockers for longer than he should have in large part because he’d been expecting a beginning-of-puberty growth spurt like Jazz had had. But nooo, no shooting up like a beanpole for him, and now he had to wait until he did turn sixteen and could finally start HRT before gaining so much as another centimeter, and listen to crazed-up fruitloops poke fun at his height in the meantime.

“Should you really be bound by the words of a child?” Vlad continued.

Maddie bit her lip, and Danny put in without thinking, “Would you break a deal you’d made with me, just because I’m a kid?”

“Of course not,” his mother was quick to answer.

“That’s right! We’ve gotta honor our terms, Vladdie,” added his father.

Danny smiled and walked over to stand by his parents. He turned around to face Vlad with a smirk. “See, that’s what makes them such good parents and makes our family so happy. They’re always making sure they act like good role models.” He felt his father put a hand on his shoulder and heard him sniffle in the way he did when he was especially proud and trying not to cry from it. Danny’s smirk melted back into a smile.

Vlad grit his teeth. “I should think good role models would put the safety of children first.” Danny’s smile vanished, an involuntary memory of the accident flashing through his mind. “I know that you’ve always been negligent when it comes to safety, Jack, and having children evidently hasn’t changed that. But if it were Daniel running around risking himself and others as well as causing millions in total property damage, would you let an agreement that you’d made before realizing you were dealing with a child stop you from getting better care for him than whatever has been letting him behave this way?”

Danny’s fists clenched at his sides. “Keeping the deals you make is important, Vlad. No matter who you make them to.” If you break our bargain and out me to my parents, you’ll be next.

A flicker of hesitation crossed Vlad’s face. Good.

What was with Vlad? That was far closer to revealing Danny’s secret than the fruitloop had ever come before. But he did know about the alliance between Phantom and the Fentons now, and Danny supposed Vlad could see the writing on the wall when it came to losing what leverage he had over Danny. Evidently, he meant to milk that leverage for all it was worth while he still could.

As if to confirm his deduction, Vlad said, “Speaking of children who’ve taken on too much responsibility: young Jasmine is off to Chicago in a few months, isn’t she? I do wonder if there are any … family matters that she’s hoping to take care of before she leaves.”

Vlad stared at Danny as he said it, and Danny narrowed his eyes in warning as he replied, “How should I know? I don’t have mind-reading powers.”

“Clearly not, or else your grades would be better,” said Vlad.

Danny clenched his fists and glared at the man. Insinuating that Danny was dumb was one thing, Vlad did that every time they fought, but insinuating that Danny would use his powers to cheat —

“Ah-ah-ah.” Vlad held a finger up in front of Danny’s face. A green glow reflected off of it. Danny grimaced, shut his eyes, and made himself take a deep breath.

“Danny’s grades have improved this year,” Maddie defended him. “Speaking of which, young man: didn’t you say you have homework to do? You should get back upstairs.”

“But I need to, uh …” get Vlad out of here before he manages to make my life even more difficult than he already has … “talk to you first,” Danny finished. Vlad’s gaze sharpened. “About school,” Danny added quickly.

“Everything alright at school, Danno?” asked his dad, sounding concerned.

“Yeah, just, um, could we talk about it without Uncle Fruitloop around?” He was too busy racing to think up something that would justify a private conversation without worrying his parents to remember to substitute in Vlad’s name.

“Danny,” his mom admonished him.

Vlad straightened. “Well, I do have mayoral duties to be getting back to,” he acquiesced. “If you wind up needing any legal help with the Ghost Investigation Ward, my lawyers are at your service, Maddie. It had been lovely to see you as always. Do let me know when you’ve subjected Phantom to more research, Jack; I’m sure we’re all fascinated to see how that goes. Oh, and take care, little badger.” He gave Danny a grim smile as he finished, then turned towards the stairs. “Ta for now.”

“Wait, Vladdie! Don’t you want to stay for a game of Ghost Zone Monopoly? I just finished touching up the game board with some glowing highlights!” Jack called after him.

“Another time,” Vlad said without a hint of enthusiasm and without breaking his stride.

Jack’s shoulders slumped. He turned to Danny when Vlad had reached the top of the stairs and disappeared from their sight. “Danny, would it kill ya to be friendlier to Vlad?” he asked.

“It might,” Danny muttered. He shook his head. “Why were you guys talking with Vlad about Phantom? I thought they were enemies, and you were his allies.”

His mom pursed her lips. “It’s proven … challenging for us to retain as much objectivity as scientists need, here, so we need the perspective of another ectoscientist who isn’t directly involved and who doesn’t share all of our theories,” she explained.

“And getting an extra check on your objectivity is more important than —?” Danny cut himself off and drew a deep, calming breath. Of course the research was more important to his parents than their alliance: the whole alliance was in service to research. He’d known that, and if he and Jazz hadn’t thought to put any specific checks on who their parents could discuss research on Phantom with, then that was their own fault.

“We just want to make sure that we’re doing everything right and no one gets hurt,” Maddie insisted.

Danny didn’t ask whether Phantom counted as someone they didn’t want to get hurt.

“Which reminds me, Danno! D’you remember that time Phantom stole your face?” asked Jack.

“Huh?” Danny blinked. Had his parents seen him transform at some point and assumed — no, wait, that was the excuse that Sam and Tucker had used when they were distracting Danny’s parents for him during the Amorpho thing. Danny gave a nervous chuckle. “Oh, that. That, uh, turned out to be a shapeshifting ghost, actually.” He needn’t include the detail of who exactly Amorpho had impersonated. And since it was always a good idea to drive home the importance of allies, he added, “Some people who Phantom apparently works with figured it out and took care of the shapeshifter. I didn’t give Phantom a chance to explain when he showed up to fix things afterward, just ran him off, so I only found out later.”

“How did you find out?” asked his mom, brow furrowed.

“Uhhhh … you know how Tucker sometimes attends the Casper Phan Club meetings, because of the whole anti-bullying pledge thing he’s been working on?” said Danny.

“What?” said Jack.

“Yeah, Tucker came up with this idea that Phantom could drop by Casper Phan Club meetings every so often if the members all kept their pledges, and he got Phantom to agree to it during a rescue this one time.” And boy, had Technus not stopped teasing them about his own part in Tucker’s staged “rescue.” At least Technus and Tucker had been getting along recently. And at least the anti-bullying pledge had been working with Phantom backing it, although it remained embarrassing how many of the school’s worst bullies were Phan Club members. If his peers’ perception of Phantom could shift towards “protector spirit” and away from “superpowered teenager who can beat up anybody who annoys him” already, that would be great.

Maddie blinked. “Tucker talks to Phantom?”

Danny hoped his smile didn’t look panicked. “I mean, not, like, regularly, just at those club meetings, since he’s one of the students who verifies that the pledges are being kept. But he got the real story about the shapeshifter thing, with backing testimony from, uh, from Mr. Lancer.”

“Oh yeah! That teacher guy was involved too!” said Jack. He frowned. “Huh. Between that and how many times he’s told us that everyone was overshadowed during the City Hall incident —”

What? thought Danny. Yeah, Lancer had been overshadowed at that time and had probably realized afterward how many other people had been as well, but why had he told Danny’s parents that?

“— Do you think he’s one of Phantom’s other allies?” Jack finished.

“… No?” said Danny. Lancer was always going on about how reckless Phantom and the Red Huntress were. It had become Lancer’s favorite impromptu lecture topic for when he was monitoring detention.

“Ooh, we can bring him some of our upgraded ecto-blasters and ask him if he’d like to come ghost hunting with us! He’ll be so excited to see how they work!” said Maddie.

Danny groaned, wondering how many extra detentions he’d just accidentally earned himself.

“But what was it you wanted to talk to us about?” Danny’s mom asked, recalled to the topic of school.

“Oh, right.” Well, there was the one thing, which he’d meant to put off until he’d thought it through more, but … “So, uh, you guys know how the study hall this year has been really helpful, and I was thinking for next year —”

“You want to take it again instead of doing an extra science class like you’d been planning?” Jack interrupted in that trying-to-hide-disappointment-behind-neutrality tone of voice he sometimes got when they discussed school.

Danny winced. “Y-yeah. And, since upperclassmen don’t have to take PE, I was thinking maybe I could do two study halls.”

Danny had told himself (as well as his parents) that he would take on a more ambitious courseload in the second half of high school, to help make up for his lackluster early performance. It could mean securing himself a spot in the honors college at the local university and not totally giving up on the NASA dream. But … with one government agency desperate to research him, walking straight into the arms of another one would probably never be a good idea for him, especially considering how carefully he needed to stay on top of the workout routine that Sam had been making him do ever since they’d realized that overusing his ghost powers ate away at his bones and muscles, just to be able to pass himself off as fully human.

“Danny …” Maddie’s voice was strained.

“I know,” Danny told her. “It’s just, I might be doing better this year, but I’m still not getting enough sleep. I … don’t think I can keep this up for two more years.” It hurt to admit, like letting go of part of himself, or at least of part of who he’d expected himself to be.

“Well, maybe there’s something else you can cut back on —”

“I’ve tried, Mom. I really have! I don’t want to give up on the old schedule, I’m just tired, and I’m sorry, but I’m never going to be Jazz 2.0.”

“We don’t want you to be, Danny,” said his dad. “All we want is for you to do what’s right for yourself.”

“I … I know.” Danny’s shoulders slumped.

Maddie bit her lip, watching him. “Is there a reason you’re bringing this up right now, sweetie?”

“I just, uhh, figured this way there would be enough time to schedule a parent-teacher conference about it before this year ends?” Danny tried.

“Well, I suppose getting your teacher’s input on it wouldn’t be a bad idea. But we’ll give it a few more weeks first, okay? Maybe you’ll get more on top of things and change your mind.”

Danny shrugged. “Maybe.”

“And tell us if you need help, alright, Danno?” added Jack. “You don’t need to go limiting your future just because of one long week.”

More like two long years. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll go get my math homework done.”

“That’s my boy!”

Danny turned for the stairs, then paused. “Y’know … Jazz always says that if you’re trying to figure out whether you’re making the right choice, you can’t bog yourself down with future what-ifs. You have to pay attention to the effects of your choices that you can actually see,” he said to his parents. Jazz had told him that in relation to ghost-fighting, but it applied to high school too, as well as to … “We just want to make sure that we’re doing everything right,” his mom had said. Danny swallowed before continuing more hesitantly, “I was happy about the alliance, you know. It feels like everything’s been easier lately. I hope it continues.” He didn’t look back as he climbed the stairs.

His heart was pounding when he reached the top. Will they figure it out? Between that last statement and Vlad’s unsubtlety, it was possible, although it was still just as likely that his parents would chalk his statement about things being easier up to the past week’s lack of ghostly disturbances at school or to his no longer being known among his peers as the kid whose parents shot at Phantom. Danny wondered how many hints they would need before they did figure it out. He was beginning to realize that he had no idea how to actually tell someone that he was Phantom if they didn’t work it out on their own.

Neither his mom nor his dad was staring up at him when he glanced back before stepping out of sight of the lab, so they probably suspected nothing yet.

Well. Packets of math homework awaited. Danny grabbed his backpack and sat down at the kitchen table to work.

Chapter Text

The call button buzzed.

Jack set down the adjusted ghost-seeker he and Maddie had been testing and bolted across the lab to press the “receive” button on the little device, no less energetically than he had the past dozen times this week. So far, Phantom had only called in activity reports rather than requesting backup, but each call could be the one where that changed. Besides, if Jack and Maddie answered quickly, then they got to listen in on Phantom’s interactions with other ghosts.

“Ten-four!” Jack called as he pressed the button.

“I think that’s what you say once you’ve actually received a message,” Phantom’s echoey voice answered back, projecting through the lab from the surprisingly powerful speaker on the little device. “Are you guys okay? What’s going on?”

Jack frowned. “You called us.”

“Yeah, but I called you like ten minutes ago, and you only just answered.”

“Huh?” Jack glanced over to Maddie, who returned his puzzled look. So she hadn’t heard the call button until just now, either. “No, it only buzzed now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yup.”

“But why would it —? Ohhhh. Whoops.”

The ghost sounded so chagrined that Jack couldn’t help but smile. “Pressed the wrong button, did you?”

“No, I just activated the faraday cage before I called you. I didn’t want to get a second call device fried in as many weeks, and I forgot that the signal it sends out would get trapped inside.”

A second? Jack wondered for a moment before realizing that Phantom must be referring to his brief capture by the GIW. A strong electric shock was one of the surest ways to knock out a ghost, and Phantom had been knocked out long enough for someone to put that collar on him. And his electrical scar had been starkly visible when Maddie and Jack had seen him later that night, as if something had aggravated it …

Jack winced, feeling suddenly grateful that he and Maddie had mostly avoided electrical weapons ever since Danny had gotten a bad enough shock from their ghost portal to end up in the hospital for a few nights. Phantom had a nearly human nervous system. He healed far faster than a human, but he must still feel just as much pain.

“Maybe we can modify your call button to send out a spectral energy signal instead of an electromagnetic one, so you won’t have to worry about that,” Jack suggested.

Phantom hummed thoughtfully. “Wouldn’t that be extremely lossy over any significant distance?” he asked. “Spectral energy interacts with, like, everything.”

A surprised laugh burst from Jack’s chest. “You really are a physicist, huh?”

“Well, not yet,” said Phantom, but he sounded pleased at the praise.

“What do you mean ‘not yet,’ Phantom?” asked Maddie from across the lab. Jack repeated the question so that Phantom could hear it better.

“Oh, just, I haven’t had a lot of time to study these past couple of years. I’m hoping that once the ghost fights die down more, I can get more serious about physics. There’s gotta be some cool physics research you can do when you can fly and turn intangible.”

Maddie and Jack stared at each other in shock. The ghost boy had future plans? That weren’t even related to ghost hunting? Heck, it sounded as if Phantom had a more thought-out path for his future than Danny did yet.

“Hey, are you guys in your lab?” Phantom asked, as casually as if he hadn’t just once again scrambled the Fentons’ entire understanding of ghosts. “The faraday cage got a little busted up, and —”

“Are you alright?” asked Maddie.

“What was that?”

Maddie walked over to join Jack in the call button’s relatively short receiving range. “Are you alright?” she repeated.

“Oh, yeah. It was just Skulker. Some of his missiles change direction faster than they used to now. Not the brightest idea he’s had, since I can dodge them faster than he can. And his electric nets didn’t work on me at all, ha, you should’ve seen the look on his face! Anyway, I was planning to swing by to drop him off in the Ghost Zone, so if you’re out, I can leave the Fenton Faraday Cage on a lab bench or something —”

“No, we’re here!” Jack told him.

“Oh. Okay. Uh, see you soon, then?” Phantom asked, like he would simply be coming home from work rather than breaking into a ghost hunter’s lab while the hunters in question were present and waiting. Jack wasn’t sure whether to feel more annoyed by the ghost’s brazenness or touched by his trust.

“We’ll expect you,” said Maddie.

“Ten-four,” Phantom said cheekily, and ended the call.

Maddie picked up the call button device and checked the little map on its screen. Phantom’s location tracking had ended with the call itself, but the path he’d traveled over the course of the call remained onscreen for a few moments more. It appeared that the ghost was indeed headed towards Fentonworks from a field just outside of town. Jack wondered whether Phantom had led Skulker out there to minimize the property damage from their fight.

“I wonder …” Maddie mused aloud. She set the call button down and ran for the stairs. “Wait here, Jack; I’m going to go turn off the ghost defenses and grab some physics textbooks!”

Oh, no; Phantom had activated Maddie’s mentoring mode. Jack smiled to himself and peeled off his lab gloves to fetch another carrot-apple-cheesecake cookie from the plate on the table. Maddie’s and Angela’s ongoing attempts to out-cookie recipe each other had to be one of his favorite parts of their friendship with the Foleys.

Phantom ended up reaching the lab before Maddie came back. He poked his head down cautiously through the ceiling and waved to Jack before floating the rest of the way in.

“You look a little beat up,” Jack commented with a frown. There were scuffs and tears all over the ghost boy’s suit, and one of his cheeks bore a faint but noticeable bruise.

“Not as much as Skulker does,” Phantom replied with a brief grin, patting the Fenton Thermos at his hip. His bruise faded slowly, and his suit continued to mend. His eyes roamed warily over the lab and then landed on the plate of cookies.

“Help yourself,” Jack told him.

“Sweet.”

Jack guessed from the tightness in the ghost’s shoulders that Phantom was less unperturbed about being in their lab again than he was attempting to appear, but he seemed to relax as he ate. By the time Maddie returned, the ghost was giving Jack’s cookie-devouring speed a run for its money.

Maddie set a pile of books down beside the plate. “We need to stop feeding you only sweets,” she remarked.

“Ish fine, I’mma gho’,” Phantom said around a mouthful of crumbs.

“But you’re taking in proteins and vitamins somehow, if your samples are anything to go by. How often do you eat?”

Phantom frowned at the scientific gleam in Maddie’s eye, then took a deep breath through his nose and shrugged. He swallowed. “Depends on how long I spend in ghost — outside of the Ghost Zone,” he answered.

“Can you fuel yourself with food and water instead of emotion or spectral energy?” Maddie’s hands twitched for a pen that she wasn’t currently holding. Jack looked around for a notebook and pen to hand her.

“More or less,” said Phantom. “It’s easier if I get both, but I should be able to go at least a few months on just one or the other.”

Jack and Maddie both stared at that. A ghost adapted to exist between this world and the Ghost Zone?

Maddie eagerly grabbed the notebook Jack had fetched for her and flipped it open. “How common is that for ghosts? Do you know?”

“Not, uh, not super common, but I’m not the only one. There’s, y’know, trade-offs. Like, I can’t heal quite as fast and intangibility takes more energy out of me. But I can eat cookies, so I’m not complaining.” Phantom grabbed another cookie as if to prove this point.

“How did you end up this way?” asked Jack.

Phantom winced and took a step backwards.

Maddie looked up from her notebook. “You don’t have to answer that,” she said soothingly.

“Yeah.” Phantom took a deep breath. His head turned, and he stared distantly at their portal. “I’d rather not, right now. It’s complicated. And I don’t really … know … who you’re sharing this stuff with, in the end.” He grimaced, then looked at them sharply. “But you should know, me being like this isn’t about my complexity or personality or youth or whatnot. There are plenty of ghosts whose cores are just as complicated as mine who just don’t have as physical of a body. It’s easier to see complexity with me, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there for others.”

Jack and Maddie exchanged a look.

“Really,” insisted Phantom. “You guys only see the ghosts who come here, and usually only after they’ve gotten power-drunk off a bunch of emotion. It’s like that guy who only studied stressed-out, captive wolves and made a ton of wrong claims about wolf pack structure. The same principle, anyways. You ought to visit the Ghost Zone sometime. There are whole communities and libraries and everything.”

“There are?” Maddie frowned. “We haven’t seen anything like that on our scanners.”

Phantom frowned back, apparently no less happy having his knowledge questioned than Maddie was being compared to a discredited wildlife biologist. “How far in have they gone? The region around your portal is chaotic, so you have to go out a ways to find them.”

“Want to give us a tour?” Jack asked quickly. After all, the Red Huntress had suggested they get a Ghost Zone tour. The probe that Maddie and Jack had sent into the Zone with a speed booster two days ago hadn’t yet been destroyed, and he was inclined to believe Huntress about the main danger of entering the Zone being slow-moving, class-four ghost goons.

Phantom blinked at him. “Right now? I guess I was planning to bring Skulker back to his lair anyway —”

“Why not just flush him into the Zone from the Thermos?” asked Maddie.

“Well, he doesn’t like being seen when his suit is all busted up, and he was good about giving me a recovery week, so I thought I’d pay him a return favor. But if you want a tour — Hm. The Far Frozen is probably too far for a Wednesday night. The nearest library to here is in Ghost Writer’s lair, which he won’t let me into, but he might let you in if you tell him that you’re interested in his collection. I could drop you off there, go take care of Skulker, and come back, if you promise to do your best not to tick off Ghost Writer while I’m gone. He still owes me one for breaking Truce at me, so he should play nice as long as you don’t hurt any of his books.”

“Truce” had sounded like it had a capital T. Jack asked, “‘Breaking Truce?’”

Phantom smiled. He really did seem to enjoy talking with the Fentons, as long as they steered clear of specific topics like his death and his family. “Yeah. There’s an annual holiday Truce among ghosts. Well, roughly annual; time is complicated in the Zone. I think everyone is actually experiencing whichever holiday they most associate with making peace and being joyful. If you go into the Ghost Zone from your guys’s portal, Christmas is when the Truce happens, but I swear Boxy wished me Eid Mubarak last time.” Phantom shrugged, and his smile faded, taking in the Fentons’ skeptical expressions. “Right, I guess you won’t just take my word for that. I can ask if I can bring you to the local Truce party next time, if you’d like? Last year’s was a lot of fun.”

“But … why?” Maddie asked in puzzlement.

Jack assumed she was asking why Phantom would offer to bring them along, but Phantom apparently assumed she was asking about the tradition itself. “I think it’s because your first big holiday as a ghost is hard for most of us,” he explained. “It’s easier to be around other people for it, and the easiest way to get a whole bunch of ghosts together without any fights breaking out is to declare a blanket truce.”

“And the Ghost Writer broke it?” asked Jack, not entirely certain that he wanted to hang out in the lair of a ghost who didn’t even adhere to ghost rules.

“Well, yeah, though I’d … kind of destroyed one of his books. It was an accident, but I get why he was mad,” Phantom told them, rubbing the back of his neck.

A visit to Ghost Writer’s library was sounding like a recipe for endless anxiety about accidentally knocking over bookshelves on Jack’s part. “Maybe we’ll just stick with you,” Jack suggested.

Phantom glanced down at his Thermos. “Uh, Skulker’s lair isn’t exactly in the safest part of the Zone,” he said. “Although, if we go the long way around from Klemper’s Realm …” He tapped his chin in thought, much like Maddie often did. “Yeah, that should be fine.”

“Alright!” Jack beamed. “I’ll ready the Specter Speeder!”

Maddie touched his arm. “Jack, honey, maybe we shouldn’t just …” She trailed off with a glance at Phantom.

Phantom looked confused for a moment, then blinked and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I’m gonna wait in the Zone,” the ghost said tiredly, pointing a thumb over his shoulder at the portal door. “I’ll stay by the portal for like five minutes, then take off if you don’t show up. Where should I put this?” He unclipped the dented Fenton Flexible Faraday Cage from his utility belt.

“Oh, on the snack table is fine. Take a book with you!” Maddie told him.

Phantom frowned. “A book?” He drifted closer to the pile. “Physics textbooks?”

“Well, you’ll have five minutes to study now, won’t you?” Maddie reasoned.

“I guess,” Phantom said. Despite the interest on his face, his voice had a dissatisfied tone that made Jack recall being told as a child not to take part in dinner conversations with his parents’ guests, only to smile and “act normal,” and then being handed a GIW action figure like that would whisk all his upsetness away.

The ghost sifted through the pile and took the fourth book down, tucking it into the crook of his arm. He snatched two more cookies with his other hand as he turned towards the portal.

“How many of those have you had?” Maddie called after him.

“Hey, they’ve got carrots in them, don’t they? You said I need vitamins. I’m just keeping up my vitamin A!” Phantom told her. He gave the Fentons a sarcastic salute with the cookies and vanished through the portal door.

Jack felt a twinge of worry as he realized that Phantom wouldn’t be able to get back out that way without them opening the door. If Phantom needed more food in the meantime, or if one of his allies needed his backup … maybe he had another way to get out of the Zone?

Good lord, how much had Jack’s life turned upside down that he now hoped a powerful ghost could come and go from the Real World at will?

“I think he’s upset,” Maddie observed, pursing her lips, her voice quiet.

Jack nodded. “Never fun being left outta conversations.”

“He hardly tells us everything, though. And we’re talking about going into the Ghost Zone; should we really just …?”

“Aw, Mads, it’ll be fun!” More than fun: a potential breakthrough in ectoscience, as much as their first evidence of a ghost coming through the portal into this world had been. “Don’t you want to see it?”

Not even worry could fully mask the excitement in Maddie’s eyes. “Of course I do. We know ghosts are more powerful inside, though, and we’ve only probed a little ways in so far. There could be other dangers we haven’t seen yet.”

“Nothing two or three of the world’s best ghost-hunters can’t handle!”

“That’s true.” Maddie smiled, thoughtfully tapping her chin. “Well … alright. I’m going to call the Red Huntress so that she’ll know to come look for us if we aren’t back in an hour.”

“Good thinking, Maddie! I’ll get the Specter Speeder set up!”

Jack checked over the Speeder while Maddie leaned against a lab bench with her phone pressed to her ear. He’d best grab some pillows and stock the Speeder up on snacks — Jack shook his head at himself. This wasn’t one of their impromptu trips to cheer up and bond with their kids, as much as part of Jack’s reason for suggesting it had been to lift everyone’s spirits. This was an impromptu trip with Phantom, who was someone else’s kid. And also a ghost.

“… No, not yet, he’s waiting in the Zone … Alright, I’ll put you on speaker,” Maddie was saying. “Jack, honey? Huntress has some Ghost Zone safety tips for us.”

Jack shook himself out of his thoughts and gave his wife a thumbs-up. “Let’s hear ‘em!”

Maddie pressed the button.

“Right, so, first off, don’t open any of the floating doors,” the Red Huntress’s voice informed them. “You can knock on a door if you get lost — sometimes they’re lairs of ghosts who aren’t opposed to company — but don’t open them yourself. Most of them are more trouble than they’re worth. If you see Phantom fly off towards one after telling you to stay back, remind him not to open a door if he doesn’t know where it leads, either.”

Maddie frowned. “Does he know that the doors can be dangerous?”

Huntress snorted. “Yeah, but he’s an impatient and impulsive idiot with less self-preservation instinct than an angry bee, so you can imagine how effective prior experience is as a warning.”

Maddie and Jack both opened their mouths as if to disagree, then shared a grimace and closed them.

“Rule two, if something looks dangerous or gives you a sense of foreboding, just stay away from it,” Huntress continued. “You can ask Phantom what it is: he’s done a fair amount of exploring and knows other ghosts who’ve done even more. Rule three, keep moving unless you’re in a specific ghost’s territory by their invitation. And sometimes even then. Though most ghosts won’t hurt you if you tell them that you’re with Phantom. Say ‘Champion over Ancients’ if they don’t recognize the name ‘Phantom,’ and the worst that should happen is you getting held hostage for a little while by someone who wants something from Phantom. They won’t actually hurt you, at least not on purpose.”

“What — ‘Champion over Ancients?’” echoed Maddie.

“Yeah, Ghost Boy’s got a lot of dumb titles in the Zone. That’s one of the less weird ones.”

“What are Ancients?” asked Jack.

“Powerful ghosts who’ve been around as long as the Ghost Zone itself or something like that,” Huntress answered with far less concern than the topic seemed to warrant. “I don’t know, they don’t butt into the Real World very often. Pariah Dark was one of them, but he’s sealed away now, and the others aren’t as bad.”

Jack wasn’t sure how to process that. “Uh …”

“Oh yeah, and remember that humans have the same physics in the Ghost Zone that ghosts have here,” Huntress went on blithely. “You can walk right through walls and traps if you need to. Have a good trip and don’t shoot unless something shoots at you first.”

Maddie gripped her phone tighter. “Wait, wait — what else can you tell us about these ‘Ancients?’”

The Red Huntress sighed. “Doctor Fenton, I’m not a ghost historian. Have Phantom introduce you to Frostbite if you really want to know. I have somewhere to be right now.”

“Can I give your number to my daughter so that she can tell you if we aren’t back in an hour?” Maddie asked quickly.

“Yeah, that’s fine,” said Huntress.

“Thank you. I’ll set up a groupchat between the three of us.”

“Right. See ya.” There was a click as the Red Huntress hung up.

Maddie texted on her phone while Jack got the Specter Speeder up and running. “Oh, that’s a good idea,” he heard her say.

Jack looked over. “What is?”

“Jazz suggested we leave the spare Real World Item Detector in the lab so that we’ll be easy to find in the Zone if Huntress has to come looking.” She walked over to set the Detector in plain sight on a lab bench, meanwhile picking up one of the spare backpacks that they kept on hand for whenever Danny lost his.

“Hah! We’ve got a smart girl.” Jack opened the Speeder’s doors. “Hey, do you think we should text Danny, too?”

“Jack, how likely is Danny to come home in the next hour?”

“Eh,” Jack conceded. Maddie had a point; while Jasmine’s schedule was fairly reliable, Danny was often out at all hours. Asking him to do something on a strict schedule was just a setup for disappointment and argument. He would get any chores assigned to him done eventually, but “check on us one hour from now” was too tight of a timeline.

Maddie climbed in beside Jack and pulled her door closed. “Well, I think we’re set. Let’s go make scientific history,” she said.

Jack grinned back at her. “Now that’s my idea of a perfect date.”

… … …

The Ghost Zone. The parallel plane of existence that Jack and Maddie had spent over twenty years studying, theorizing about, and peering into as best they could. Now it stretched out before them, simultaneously dark and luminous, colored green and black and purple, swirling and strange. Jack knew the scent of ectoplasm well by now, but it smelled so much fresher here. There was a feeling of static charge in the air that made his neck hairs stand on end. There was a chill that seemed to touch his mind more than his skin, whispering that he didn’t belong. Purple doors bobbed in the periphery of his sight, gently drifting about. Jack looked around him in wonder.

Maddie, meanwhile, looked up.

“Oh,” Jack heard his wife say warmly. “He looks like a little moon.”

He followed Maddie’s gaze. Phantom floated above and a little ahead of them, his legs curled up so he could rest the physics textbook on his knees as he read. Maddie was right: with a strengthened aura and a darker background, he looked a lot like a glowing celestial body.

Jack activated the Specter Speeder’s intercom speaker. “Hey, Phantom!” he called.

The ghost looked up from his reading haze and slowly closed the book. He waved to them.

Jack piloted the Speeder in his direction. Maddie gestured for him to come inside. The ghost complied, phasing through the roof. The “you don’t belong” chill of the Zone lessened as Phantom settled between the Fentons.

Maddie smiled at him. “Enjoying the textbook?”

“Uh …” Phantom looked down at its cover, and Jack followed his gaze. An Introduction to Modern Stellar Astrophysics. A space enthusiast, apparently.

Phantom swallowed sheepishly. “So, it turns out that being a ghost doesn’t come with an automatic knowledge of calculus. I really wish it did, but this is kind of beyond me.”

“Oh, I can teach you,” Maddie offered.

Phantom stared at her. “Teach me calculus? I haven’t even gotten to pre-calc yet. I honestly thought this book would be more of an overview, which is why I grabbed it.”

“Well, we can start with precalc then,” Maddie said, undeterred.

Phantom frowned. “If you want to do some kind of study on ghosts’ learning capabilities, I’d really rather we not start with math. It’s not my forte.”

“If anyone can make it your forte, it’s Maddie!” Jack told him with a grin. “You should’ve seen how many teaching assistant awards she got back in grad school.”

“Really?” Phantom asked with new interest.

“Now, Jack, that was a long time ago,” Maddie said modestly. “But I’d be happy to try. You won’t get very far in physics without a solid understanding of math, Phantom.”

“Well, maybe I’ll just be a chemist. Do chemists ever study stars?” said Phantom, but it sounded more like a token protest than like a serious rejection of the offer.

“You would still need calculus,” Maddie teased. She handed Phantom the spare backpack that they’d brought. “You can keep the textbook. Just come to me when you have time, and we can go over anything you don’t understand yet, alright?”

The allure of astrophysics was evidently compelling for the ghost. “I’ll … consider it. But I should warn you, I’m not exactly the best student.”

“Who would be, when you’re dealing with ghosts all the time?” Jack said with a laugh. Phantom gave him a long-suffering look.

“Slow progress is better than none,” Maddie put in.

“That’s what I tell myself.” Phantom tucked the textbook into the backpack. “Well, should I show you around the Ghost Zone?”

“Point the way!” said Jack, revving up the engine.

“It’ll be easier if I fly in front and you just follow me. This thing’s about as fast as I am over longer distances.” Phantom blinked as both of the scientists’ eyes landed on him. “Or, uh, I assume it is. I wouldn’t, y’know, know that from experience.”

The ghost was a surprisingly bad liar. “You’ve borrowed the Speeder,” said Jack.

“Uhhhh …”

“We aren’t mad,” Maddie promised, despite the thinning of her lips.

“… Maybe a couple of times,” Phantom admitted.

“I need to install a lock on this thing,” Jack muttered. Danny’s friends had taken the Speeder for a ride once, too, and it had taken Jack weeks to repair it afterwards.

Phantom hunched into himself. “Sorry.”

“Hey, bygones.” Jack gave him a smile in attempt to cheer him back up. In the grand scheme of things, Jack and Maddie likely had more to apologize for, even when counting all of Phantom’s thefts.

Phantom gave him a tentative return smile.

“So, are ya gonna guide us out?” asked Jack.

“Right. Yeah.” Phantom floated up but didn’t exit the Speeder yet. “It can get tight in this region, what with all the sideways walls and staircases to nowhere, so I’d prefer if you follow close behind me until we get further out and your surroundings look slightly less chaotic.”

Maddie’s gaze sharpened. “Is this area unstable?”

“Not exactly,” Phantom answered. “It’s more just … permanently liminal because of how much ectoplasm got pulled in when your guys’s portal turned on. It would be a thin place even if you took the portal down now, although it might stop constantly reordering itself. The portal’s stable enough and directs enough of the ectoplasmic flow through this region to keep everything around it stable regardless, but since the portal’s still here, none of the mess from when it first formed has cleared up.”

“How do you know which path to take, if everything moves around? Is there a pattern to the shifting?” asked Maddie.

“No, but …” Phantom shrugged. “I don’t know, I’ve developed a sense for it? From experience.”

“The region around where you formed was like this, too, then?” Maddie concluded.

Jack turned a grin on his wife as he realized where her question was going. If an especially chaotic area in the Zone corresponded to a place where a great deal of ectoplasm had once been pulled in, and the area where Phantom’s core had first formed was now like this as well, then Phantom’s oddities likely were due to a huge amount of ectoplasm’s having coalesced to form him. Maybe he’d died so close to a natural portal that practically all of his final mental state had carried over into the Zone, rather than just the strongest emotions, or maybe he’d gotten highly ectocontaminated before his death, somehow — Jack snapped his mouth shut, remembering just in time that he wasn’t supposed to ask about Phantom’s death. They didn’t have Ember around this time to pull the ghost boy out of whatever happened to him when he got caught in that memory.

“Yeah, a lot like this,” Phantom answered Maddie. Then he blinked, suddenly wary. “Uh, in some ways. Anyway. I’m going to go — yeah. Follow my lead.” He phased out through the roof, slinging the backpack over his shoulders as he went.

Jack nudged the Specter Speeder’s controls to follow the ghost.

“I wonder why he does that,” Maddie murmured.

“Does what?” asked Jack, briefly looking to her before returning his gaze to Phantom’s flight path. He wanted to avoid crashing the Speeder in an alternate dimension.

“Get comfortably conversational with us and then just — stop, all of a sudden.”

Jack mulled it over. “Scared of getting too close? He’s not a scaredy sorta ghost, though.” He trailed Phantom around an outcropping of something green and globby. Purple doors passed underneath.

“Not of most things, no. He seems to avoid his family …” Sorrow crept into Maddie’s voice, its timbre falling. “Fear of rejection, I think.”

“What, and he thinks we might stop putting up with him? We can’t, we’re his allies. That doesn’t come undone on a whim.” Plus, Jack had to admit, Phantom was fairly pleasant to be around. Once you got used to his eeriness, at least. Phantom couldn’t really be worried that Jack and Maddie would cast him out at some point, not after a formal agreement to always have each other’s backs.

… Right?

Phantom wove a path for them between two staircases floating along different axes and underneath what appeared to be half of a green townhouse turned sideways. The space ahead of them began to open up. In the distance was —

“Is that a castle?” asked Maddie, the sharper-eyed of the two of them. Jack turned the Speeder’s speaker back on just in time for the end of his wife’s sentence to project out to their tour guide.

“One of many,” Phantom told them, his voice slightly distorted from the spectral noise filter Jack had installed on the intercom. “That’s Dorathea’s kingdom. She’s the nearest of my allies to your portal. I’d take you to visit, but they’re still catching up to the modern era so technology sometimes breaks down once you enter, and I figured you’d prefer not to leave your Speeder.”

“What’s it like?” Jack asked. Their trajectory seemed to angle near, but to the left of, the floating castle complex.

“Medieval,” Phantom answered. “Except with them getting newer technology all the time and using ghost powers for a lot of things, probably more like a renaissance fair than an actual medieval kingdom. It also feels shaky compared to some lairs because its anchoring spirit changed over recently, but it is stable.”

“So lairs with multiple inhabitants still have one specific anchoring spirit?” asked Maddie. Jack was still wrapping his mind around the idea of ghosts sharing lairs. He’d known that ghosts were less territorial than he’d once believed, but to the point of sharing homes?

Phantom nodded without looking back. “Who the anchor is can change, but that’s complicated. It has to be someone who’s already closely connected to the lair, from what I understand. I was there when Dora took over from her brother. The atmosphere of the lair changed, like, immediately when that happened.”

More ghost families. Formed after death, or before, Jack wondered? Was that question too close to the topics of Phantom’s own death and family to ask him?

The castle complex gained definition as they drew nearer. It was purple and black, ringed by an equally purple and black forest, with a greenish pond in between. Small sailboats dotted the pond. There were six different towers on the castle, all spiky. A handful of smaller floating islands nearby boasted cultivated fields. Someone on the outlying island closest to them raised a tall yellow flag.

Phantom slowed. “That’s a hail,” he told the Fentons. “Yellow, so not an emergency, but they’re my allies: I should answer.”

Jack hit the Specter Speeder’s braking thrusters. “Can you get close enough to answer without hitting the technological dead zone?” He and Maddie should get as close of a look as they could of this place, if they had the opportunity. At least a dozen visible ghosts in the same lair? Ghost sailboats? Cultivated ghost fields?

“It’s not always a dead zone these days. But yeah, that shouldn’t be a problem,” said Phantom. He turned towards the castle, and the flag-bearer, a green ghost in a distinctly medieval-looking cloth hat, waved their flag in acknowledgement before floating up from the island retreating into the castle.

As Phantom and the Fentons drifted to a halt thirty feet back from the furthest-lying island, the other ghost returned with a companion in tow. The new ghost was green-skinned and blonde and wore a blue dress with a green sash, pendant, and crown.

The pair of ghosts drifted up to them. Jack nudged the Specter Speeder to the side so that he and Maddie could see all of the ghosts’ faces.

The crown-wearing ghost dropped a midair curtsy, her long braid bobbing. “Ohh, Sir Danny —” she began, her voice halfway between grace and agitation. Jack startled for a moment at the address; he’d gotten used to the ghost boy just being called “Phantom.”

“Princess Dorathea,” Danny Phantom interrupted with a half-bow of his own. With his backpack on, the bow ended up looking like a child’s playacting, but the princess ghost seemed unoffended.

“Have you seen my brother, the prince?” Dorathea finished.

Phantom straightened. “Not recently. Did something happen?”

“His amulet’s gone missing,” said Dorathea.

“Oh.” Phantom apparently understood more from this information than Jack or Maddie did. “Well, that’s not great, but I don’t think you need to worry about losing your sovereignty. You’ve got allies if it comes to a fight, basically everyone in your kingdom prefers your rule, and I don’t know if the lair itself can have an opinion but it’s clearly been faring better since you took over. The plants are growing now and everything.”

“How did you manage that?” Maddie interjected keenly.

Phantom and Dorathea turned to look at them. Dorathea’s eyes widened. “Oh, these aren’t your usual companions!”

“New allies,” Phantom introduced them. “Maddie and Jack. I was showing them around the Realms a little.”

“‘The Realms?’” Jack echoed.

“A lot of ghosts call the Ghost Zone the Infinite Realms,” Phantom explained.

That was interesting. Jack had only ever heard Phantom refer to it as the Ghost Zone before, like humans did. Come to think of it, Phantom had also called their world the Real World, and that couldn’t be the ghosts’ name for it.

“Thank you for coming by when you were busy,” Dorathea told Phantom.

The ghost boy shook his head. “It’s no problem. Thanks for letting me know about Aragon. I’ll keep an eye out.”

Dorathea gave him a slight smile, then turned to Maddie. “The plants will grow even without help, so long as time runs forward and they don’t get burned down,” she explained.

“But what do they consume? How do they grow?” Maddie pressed. “Ectoplasm in those quantities should animate anything, but they don’t look animate.”

“Well, they’re fertilized with spent ectoplasm,” Dorathea answered, looking confused.

Maddie’s eyes widened. “There’s an ectoplasm cycle!”

Phantom explained to Dorathea, “They’re, uh, natural philosophers.”

The princess ghost’s confusion cleared. “Oh, those never talk sense. Will they want a sapling to take back with them? We have a few potted somewhere, for your friend.”

“Yes!” Maddie answered eagerly.

Dorathea nodded to her erstwhile flag-bearer. “George, if you would?”

The other ghost flew off, presumably to fetch the promised sapling.

Phantom, who’d been frowning contemplatively for a while, told Dorathea, “I’ll be back here again in two days even if I don’t hear anything about Aragon. I promised Youngblood that I’d play with him on Friday. If you want, I can come here afterwards, just to talk. Not about strategy or anything, just …”

He trailed off, but Dorathea nodded. “I would like that. I’d so hoped that my brother had moved on with the rest of the kingdom.”

“Yeah,” Phantom said in a knowing voice.

“We were close when we were children. I know it was long ago, but I used to look up to him before he grew so …” Dorathea shook her head and spotted the returning George, potted sapling in hand. “Well, I shouldn’t keep you. I’ll see you on Friday.”

“I’ll try not to crash land on your castle grounds this time,” Phantom joked.

Dorathea chuckled in response. “That would be appreciated. Farewell.”

George handed Phantom the potted sapling, eyeing the futuristic Specter Speeder with suspicion. Phantom accepted the plant with one hand and waved goodbye to Dorathea with the other. Jack and Maddie followed suit.

They flew a good distance away from the lair before Phantom indicated for Jack to stop the Speeder and phased himself inside to set the plant down. Maddie immediately picked it back up.

“Do you know how to help it grow?” Maddie asked the ghost, turning the pot slowly in her hands and staring at the sapling’s thin black stem and purple leaves.

Phantom shrugged. “Not personally. Another of my allies has had some success at keeping Ghost Zone plants alive — so to speak — outside of here, so I can ask if they have any advice.”

Jack blinked, realizing that Phantom’s friend that Dorothea had had saplings ready for might be a human ally rather than another ghost. Some human had either been introduced or introduced themself to Dorathea as a friend of Phantom’s, rather than as an ally. What did that mean to them?

“An ectobiologist?” Maddie’s eyes lit with interest.

“Uh, not really. They keep Ghost Zone plants for the aesthetic.” Phantom smiled as if he found this endearing.

Maddie asked, “Are they able to propagate the plants?”

“I think so?” Phantom raised his eyebrows. “Are you planning a whole ecto-garden, now? That would give a new meaning to the term ‘greenhouse.’”

Jack snorted. Phantom smiled. Maddie, a far-away look on her face, didn’t react.

“This could resolve the issue I’ve been having with self-charging batteries,” Maddie said to no one in particular. “There’s so much promise there, with larger quantities of ectoplasm generating their own spectral energy by animating themselves and feeding on emotion they produce, but the ectoplasm loses its coherence eventually if it isn’t replaced. If these plants can take in ‘spent’ ectoplasm and produce fresh, and I tie them into the same system …”

Phantom’s smile dropped, and he tensed. “Are you … talking about taking something aware enough to feel emotion and using it as a battery?”

“Just a blob ghost,” said Maddie, her abstracted expression not changing.

Phantom’s eyes flashed brighter. “So sticking ‘blob’ into the phrase ‘it’s just a ghost’ makes it a perfectly good justification all over again?!”

Jack stiffened. Maddie looked up, finally noticing the mood shift.

Phantom’s hand drifted to his neck. His voice took on a note of anguish. “Are you going to twist everything I show you around till it comes back to bite me? Why do I even —?” His eyes flashed again and landed on the speaker controls, and he stopped.

“Phantom —” Jack tried.

“No, forget it,” Phantom cut him off. He smacked the speaker’s off button. “Forget all of this. Follow me out to Skulker’s lair if you want, I’ll guide you back after, but keep that thing off.” He gestured at the speaker without looking at it, then shot through the roof and flew onward.

Jack revved the Speeder up to follow him and reached for the speaker controls.

Maddie put a hand over his to stop him. “Jack, give him a minute to calm down.”

“But Maddie …” He cast her an anxious glance. Had she missed Phantom reaching towards his neck, or had she simply not understood the gesture, having only heard the GIW collar described rather than seeing it on him? We have to tell him we won’t let that happen to him again, no matter what.

Maddie gave him a pained smile. “He just needs a moment to think, like our kids do sometimes. Let him have it.”

“But he’s not one of our kids. Our kids know what we mean, and they come back because they’re our kids and we care about ‘em more than anything.”

“Jack, I don’t think that Phantom’s going to break an alliance over a hypothetical battery.”

“But he’s not talking to us! And what if it’s not just the battery? He said ‘everything!’” Jack had lost friends that way before, a load of past actions that he either hadn’t been able to help or hadn’t thought were bothering anyone thrown suddenly back in his face, the other party going straight from “we’re fine” to “I can’t put up with you anymore” with no warning, or at least, none that Jack had been able to see.

“Teenagers exaggerate.” Maddie tried for a reassuring smile. Her face didn’t quite manage it.

So Maddie wasn’t wholly unaffected by Phantom’s outburst. That was somewhat reassuring, in that she hadn’t dismissed it before she concluded that it wasn’t a breaking point. Jack could wait, trusting that her assessment was good.

He could wait. Definitely. It was within his capabilities, and Phantom had said he didn’t want to talk right now. Patience was a virtue.

… He hated waiting.

Jack tried to distract himself by taking in the scenery, but most of it was monotonous, and the parts that weren’t made him want to ask Phantom questions about them (did that canyon have teeth? Were the teeth just strange formations, or did the canyon actually eat things? Was there any rhyme or reason to the different patterns on the floating doors? One of them looked like a refrigerator door; what did that mean?). From a ghost as habitually chatty as Phantom, the silent treatment was surprisingly effective.

Even Maddie’s aimed-for nonchalance began to slip after a while. “Is he that protective of blob ghosts? I thought that he would think of them the way we think of mice, at most, but there is that clause in our agreement about his not having to turn ghosts that he catches over to us. I’d assumed he only meant more complex ones, but he hasn’t asked us for help with any ghosts yet, even that swarm of bug-like ones where more ghost hunters would have made the work faster.”

Oh, good lord, was that part of it, too? Jack thought back to Phantom’s referencing the destabilized blob ghost in their brief argument about the Fentons not being the most careful researchers. At the time, Jack hadn’t thought of his bringing it up as anything other than proof of a point, but now …

A large clock hand appeared in the void next to where Phantom was flying and spun in a circle, leaving a swirling blue disc in its path. Phantom halted so fast that Jack had to slam the braking thrusters to avoid overshooting him. Busy bracing himself against the deceleration, Jack almost missed the sight of a purple-hooded ghost exiting the swirling portal.

The Speeder jerked to a stop. Maddie and Jack stared as Phantom agitatedly addressed the newcomer ghost, only to be cut off by the other ghost’s saying something they couldn’t hear.

The Fentons exchanged only the briefest of glances before Maddie hit the intercom speaker controls. Phantom would probably forgive them, Jack thought.

“— timeflow is stable, and Danielle is safe and well. Not all of my existence is spent dealing with an impending disaster,” the purple-hooded ghost said in a deep, echoing voice. Jack had never seen a ghost that actually looked old before now. This new ghost had a wrinkled mouth, a long, white beard, and a stick-thin ghostly tail — and then he shapeshifted into a chubby toddler ghost with the same cloak, the same clock in his middle, and the same scar on the left side of his face.

Phantom seemed unsurprised by the change. His shoulders had relaxed at the clock ghost’s assurances, and he asked, “Why are you here, then?”

“I felt like taking a little stroll,” said the clock ghost dryly.

“Right, because you take strolls so often, and if they just happen to cross my own path, that’s a complete coincidence,” Phantom replied with equal sarcasm, flapping his hand disbelievingly.

“It is as far as the Observants are concerned.” The clock ghost shapeshifted into apparent middle-age as he spoke, then pointed to the Fenton Thermos at Phantom’s hip. Jack counted three watches on each of the ghost’s wrists, which seemed excessive. “While I’m here, I have a task for Skulker. Let me borrow the Thermos. I’ll ask Danielle to return it to you.”

Phantom hesitated. “Are you planning to throw Skulker into the past again? Because I don’t think he would appreciate me —”

“Time ou—in,” said the clock ghost, hitting the top of his clock staff and then suddenly jumping position, like he’d moved while the rest of the world had held still. The Thermos was now in the clock ghost’s hand.

Phantom blinked and crossed his arms. “You could’ve just answered my question and waited.”

“That would take time. I have a schedule to keep.”

“I thought you were out for a stroll.”

The clock ghost shifted back into a toddler and said, “I have many things to get done on this stroll.” He turned to look directly at Maddie and Jack. Jack wondered how eyes without pupils or even irises managed to be that piercing. “Jack and Madeline Fenton.”

“They can’t hear you; that thing’s almost soundproof, and their intercom isn’t —” Phantom stopped as he caught sight of the Fentons with their mouths open to reply. The ghost boy rolled his eyes and threw his hands up. “Of course the intercom’s on. When have they ever listened to anything I’ve said?”

Maddie winced but focused on the clock ghost and hazarded, “Clockwork?”

Oh: the ghost that Phantom had said looked after Danielle. That would explain his outfit. Jack hadn’t seen a file about Clockwork in Phantom’s binder, but that could just mean that Clockwork wasn’t a repeat visitor to Amity Park.

“Excellent, we can skip introductions,” said Clockwork.

“What do you want with them?” Phantom asked Clockwork tautly, defensively.

Clockwork waved away Phantom’s concern. “Mainly to warn them both to drive more safely. I have an interest in their remaining alive through the next several decades, after all.”

“… Why do you need us alive?” said Jack. Is there some ghostly plot that Maddie and I got caught up in without realizing it?

Clockwork answered, “I am the Master of Time. I monitor its flow. In the Infinite Realms, unlike in your world, time can be traversed in more than one direction, and different points of it can come into conflict. I ensure that the timeflow as a whole remains stable. The interlinked nature of our worlds means that this requires neither world destroy the other, so you may be assured that any plots I were to involve you in would be to the benefit of your own goals as well.” At Jack’s astonished expression, he added, “I see all of the possible paths events may take. In several paths, you asked that aloud.”

Phantom frowned at Clockwork, looking more annoyed now than concerned. “Hey, that’s a way better explanation of what you do than you gave me when we met.”

Clockwork, now old again, said, “They each have a doctorate in physics or mechanical engineering. You were fourteen and barely passing algebra.”

Fourteen. Jack shivered. Vlad had suggested that age for Phantom, but until now, he hadn’t really imagined Phantom dying quite that young. Younger than either of Jack’s children were now, and they still looked like kids in Jack’s eyes, despite all of the ways they’d matured. Phantom had been fourteen. Barely even a teenager. Jack wanted to hug him.

“I get the point,” Phantom grumbled in acquiescence.

Jack glanced at his wife and saw her frowning in fierce contemplation. Aloud, she asked, “Time obeys different physics in the Ghost Zone?”

“Yes,” Clockwork confirmed.

“But that doesn’t make sense. Parallel timelines, yes, but cyclical ones …” Maddie trailed off, no doubt lost in physics theories in her mind. The time ghost shifted to middle age as she spoke.

Clockwork told them, “I do not expect you two to listen to me. As scientists, I expect you to listen to data. As humans, I expect you to listen to the wisdom of your fellows.” His voice was firm, and his red eyes bored into the Fentons. “Listen well.”

The time ghost definitely did “ominous” far better than Phantom did. Despite the lack of any apparent threat, Jack and Maddie exchanged a wary glance.

Clockwork continued, “As it happens, I am not running any plots that you are involved in. I monitor the flow of time; I do not make a habit of interfering with it.”

Phantom snorted at this assertion.

Maddie asked, “And why do you know Phantom?”

“Because as long as he is well-supported, his existence averts a number of conflicts between the Infinite Reals and the Living Realms that might otherwise grow beyond even my power to manage. Pariah Dark’s attempted conquest, for example.” Clockwork changed back into a toddler.

“Wait.” Phantom stared at the other ghost. “Wait, that was before we met — how long have you been watching me?”

“I can observe the whole timeline,” Clockwork reminded him.

“But that means that you let this happen in the first place.” Phantom gestured down the length of his own ghostly form.

Clockwork said, simply, “Yes.”

Jack felt a wave of cold flush through him at the implication.

Phantom’s eyes went wide with hurt. Jack’s heart ached at the sight. In a strangled voice, Phantom asked, “You …?”

“The Infinite Realms and its mirror the Living Realms would not have remained as separated as they had been for much longer, regardless of the path events had taken,” Clockwork said flatly. “The path we are on represents the least destructive collision between them. Would you care to wager how many other paths with stable portals opening fail to result in any full-formed, sapient minds being snuffed out?” Clockwork snapped his fingers as he finished.

Phantom stared. “You could have told me that,” he said, faintly.

“This was the most opportune moment to tell you.”

“Of course it was.” Phantom sighed.

Clockwork finally relented enough to put a hand on the younger — presumably younger, despite their present appearances — ghost’s shoulder.

Maddie’s voice snapped, “Phantom, come here.”

Jack looked at his wife. To his surprise, he found her whole body tense, her fingers gripping the edges of the Specter Speeder’s weapons control panel. To his even greater surprise, Phantom immediately obeyed the command.

Clockwork nodded to the Fentons. “Try not to betray the trust you’ve been given,” he instructed them, smiling portentously. Several rings of light burst into being along different diagonals and resolved into the swirling blue portal from before. As Clockwork disappeared through the portal, a large clock hand turned in a circle once again, sweeping it out of existence.

Phantom drifted to a stop a few feet in front of the Speeder. “What — uhhh.” He stopped as he saw Maddie’s thunderous expression.

Maddie drew a deep breath. More calmly, but still with clear anger, she asked, “Phantom, how long has that ghost been manipulating you?”

“Clockwork?” The teenage ghost looked baffled. “Look, I’m not sure what all of that looked like, but between Plasmius and Spectra and Walker and that one time with Kitty, I know what getting manipulated by another ghost is like, and that’s not what Clockwork does. Clockwork just … keeps an eye on me and sometimes steps in to keep people that I care about from dying. Like the warning to drive more safely, which you should definitely listen to.”

“Aww, kiddo.” Jack’s chest warmed.

“What?” Phantom asked, then flushed green, apparently realizing what he’d just admitted.

Either missing or ignoring for now the byplay about Phantom caring about them, Maddie said gently, “Phantom, even if Clockwork is generally helpful, it’s still worrisome that he let you —”

“Let me make a stupid, deadly mistake, like countless other teenagers across time and space? Clockwork isn’t anywhere near strong enough to stop all of them; what makes me special? Besides, I’m still here. Yeah, becoming a ghost hurt and it was hard and I wished that it hadn’t happened for months, but I don’t anymore. I’m happy with who I’ve become. Being a ghost isn’t actually the worst fate imaginable, whatever you two think.”

“You wouldn’t change it?” Jack asked and then immediately wished he’d thought before speaking.

Phantom wrinkled his nose. “It’s not an idle question,” the ghost said. “I had a reality-altering gauntlet for a few minutes after getting the thing away from Freakshow; I could have made myself just a human again. There wouldn’t have even been any monkey’s-paw consequences like if I’d wished for Desiree to do it any of the times we’ve fought.” He sighed and dropped his hands. “So, no. For all that this isn’t the existence I’d hoped for, I really wouldn’t change it now.”

Jack tried to imagine having the opportunity to change the past and not taking it. Given the same chance, he would have undone the proto-portal accident that had driven Vlad apart from them for twenty years in a heartbeat, never mind that Vlad had attributed his success in life to the things he’d learned while recovering from that accident. Would Vlad ever have forgiven him for undoing the present for the sake of a gentler past?

“But you still spend so much time in the Real World,” said Maddie, seemingly struggling to reconcile the Phantom who claimed to be content as a ghost with the Phantom who clung so hard to the world of humans.

Phantom crossed his arms. “I’m not leaving Amity Park until there’s a better solution for managing all the ghost incursions. They wouldn’t stop at this point even if you dismantled your portal, because of how liminal and chock full of natural portals the whole town has become, so it’s just negotiate, negotiate, negotiate with rock-stubborn adrenaline junkies who never listen because apparently they’d rather I be stuck here dealing with their bad ideas forever.”

“Ha! … Wait,” said Jack, realizing that that description didn’t just apply to ghosts.

Maddie bit her lip. Hesitantly, but determinedly, she asked, “Phantom?”

The ghost reached up to massage his forehead. “What now?”

“I think that Jack and I need to improve our research ethics guidelines. Is that … something that you’d like to help us with?”

Phantom blinked at her in startlement. “Uh, yes? That’s — yes. Wait, did you mean tonight, because I’ve got ho— uhh, other stuff I should be doing tonight, but that can wait if —”

“Any night is fine,” Maddie interrupted. “It might take more than one discussion, anyway. It could be weekly, on top of check-ins.” Monday nights had been proposed as a check-in time, but they’d been seeing each other often enough so far that they hadn’t yet scheduled one. Ooh, Jack could take charge of snacks for the check-ins if they started having them at a regular time.

Phantom’s shoulders relaxed slightly, the backpack sagging lower down his back. “That works.”

“Alright!” Jack grinned. “I’ll get the Fenton Flexible Faraday Cage fixed up by Monday! Or Saturday; we’ll see you Saturday. But there’ll be fudge for Monday!”

“Jack, we really should have more than just cookies and ice cream and fudge,” said Maddie.

“Hey, fudge is an important food group!”

Phantom chuckled at the exchange. “Well … thanks,” the ghost told them. His shoulders fell the rest of the way. “And, uh, I’m sorry for blowing up earlier.”

“It’s alright, moonbeam,” said Maddie.

The ghost blinked and glanced down at his glowing aura. “Huh,” was all the comment he gave the nickname. He didn’t look up for some time.

Remembering the Red Huntress’s advice to keep moving while in the Zone, Jack asked, “So, are ya gonna show us Skulker’s lair?”

“Right.” Phantom snapped out of whatever reverie he’d been in. He rubbed his arms in discomfort. “Uh, it’d be kind of … impolitic to go there while Skulker is busy being tossed around in time. And I don’t think I’m up for any more surprise ghost encounters today. Is it okay if I just guide you back to the portal and show you next time?”

“That’s fine,” said Maddie, at the same time as Jack said, “Sure thing, Ghost Boy!”

The conversation on their return trip was a lot more lively. Jack and Maddie learned that the betoothed canyon did eat anything that got too close, and the patterns on the doors occasionally gave insight into what lay behind them, and some of the floating windows would show you different realms if you pressed your face up to the glass.

Phantom wove them through the jumbled mess around their portal as expertly as he had the first time. He paused in the bubble of open space around the portal itself. “Right, well, here you are,” he told them. “Hope you enjoyed the tour, please make sure to take all belongings with you when you leave and so on and so forth. I’ll clear out of your way.” He faded out of visibility as he finished speaking.

“See you on Saturday for the MRI!” Jack called out, hoping Phantom was still near enough to hear. There was no reply.

Jack guided the Specter Speeder through the portal and closed the portal doors behind him, trying not to dwell on what it meant that Phantom tended to exit conversations with them so suddenly, with little in the way of fond parting words. The Speeder hummed as it powered down. With cell phone service once again available, Maddie was already letting the groupchat she’d made with Huntress and Jazz know that the Fentons were back safe.

“These recordings are going to keep us busy for months once we switch over to analysis,” Maddie commented. “A whole ghost kingdom and a ghost who might be able to stop time — I hope we got video of whatever that time out was. I want to see if we can figure out what sort of hold he has over Phantom, too.”

Jack paused, halfway out the Speeder door. “Recordings?”

“You did set up video and audio when you were getting the Speeder ready, didn’t you, dear?”

“Uh,” said Jack. “Well that woulda been smart.”

“Jack.”

He winced. “Aw, I’m sorry, Mads. You know I’m a goofball sometimes.”

Maddie reached up to massage her forehead. “Well, let’s write down everything we can remember about the trip. Separately.”

That may have been scientific best practice, to ensure that their written accounts didn’t bias each other’s, but the rebuke was clear nonetheless. “I’ll, uh, head upstairs,” said Jack, leaving Maddie the better work environment of the lab.

The emergency ops center made a decent backup work space. Jack made his way towards the roof, pausing when he passed by Danny’s room and heard a distinct flump from behind the closed door.

Well, whadd’ya know, Danny was home after all. Oh, man, Jack needed to tell him about visiting the Ghost Zone. Danny used to be so interested in his parents’ work when he was younger, and even if he’d pulled away from it since starting high school, this was a breakthrough big enough to excite anyone.

Jack pounded on his son’s door, barely restraining himself from turning the doorknob. Danny had threatened to install a deadbolt on his door if his family didn’t stop barging in without his permission. (Jack and Maddie had warned him that that would be dangerous in an emergency, but Danny had pointed out that in an emergency, his parents would shoot down his door regardless of whether there was a lock on it, which they hadn’t been able to deny.) He hadn’t put a deadbolt in yet, but it would be better not to push. “Danny? Hey, Danny!”

Jack kept knocking until the handle turned and the door swung inward. “Danny! You’ll never believe what your mother and I just —” He stopped.

Danny’s eyes were red. And wet. There was a strain in his voice as he asked, “What, Dad?”

For all that he was a physically expressive young man, Jack’s son rarely cried. “Danny, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Danny answered in the same strained voice.

“What happened, son?”

“Nothing happened. It’s just been a long day, okay?”

The conversation about school schedules from the past weekend drifted through Jack’s mind. Stepping into the room, he asked, “Is school getting to you that much?”

“No, it’s — well, that’s part of it, but mostly …” Danny sighed, stepped back, and flopped onto his bed with an air of weightlessness that reminded Jack of Phantom. He stared distantly at the ceiling. “How come nobody ever asked me if this was what I wanted to do with my life?” There was a hint of a whine in his voice, and Jack wondered what Danny had gotten himself into now. Wearing the Casper Raven mascot suit at all football games, instead of only filling in when the regular mascot was absent?

Jack sat down on the opposite end of the bed. He followed his son’s gaze up to the constellations of glow stars, which were just starting to alight as the evening’s last daylight disappeared.

Despondently, Danny said, “I wanted to be an astronaut.”

“You still can, Danno,” Jack assured him. “One or two bad years of high school doesn’t mean that —”

“It’s not just that.” Danny sighed. “Dad, you told me NASA decided against using your compactifying tech because of the spectral energy it gave off, because they couldn’t be sure what it might do. There’s no way they wouldn’t notice how ectocontaminated I am. I thought … I thought that I could prove that sending me up would be worth any risk, but that’s never gonna happen, is it?”

“Hey, don’t say ‘never.’ If there’s one thing we Fentons are good at, it’s achieving the impossible! Just look at what your mother and I have accomplished!”

“I think I’ve already used up my lifetime supply of impossible achievements,” Danny replied dryly.

Jack wasn’t sure what prior impossibilities Danny was referring to, but he doubted they were relevant at the moment. Swinging his fist across his chest in a “We can do it!” gesture, he said, “Well, if ectocontamination is the problem, we can run you through the Fenton Ghost Catcher! That should get any ghost dreck out of you.”

“Already tried,” Danny told him dryly. “All it does is split me in half. It’s not fun. I’m not about to try again.”

Split him in half? “It runs that deep, huh?” said Jack. Maybe Maddie’s parents had had a point after all when they’d admonished her for working around ectoplasm while she was pregnant. It was just, they’d finally both received their doctorates and had been able to pour themselves into ectoscience research once again after frittering years away on university-approved thesis projects, and Jazz had finally been old enough for daycare, and they hadn’t wanted to waste another moment. And Danny had come out perfectly healthy, hadn’t he?

The Ghost Catcher having that effect on him suggested ectoconamination at the molecular level, though, not just the cellular. That was scientifically fascinating, that ectoplasm could be so intricately interwoven with a living body: the flipside of molecules from their world being so interwoven with Phantom’s ectoplasm. Which meant that Maddie and Jack had an opportunity to study the effect from both sides —

Danny’s eyes met his, then widened. He jumped off the bed. “Dad, no.”

Jack blinked in confusion. “No what?”

“I don’t care what brilliant new decontam idea you just thought up, I’m not going to try it. Don’t look at me like that. You guys never think about what damage you might be doing or stop and listen when you get that absorbed, so leave me out of it for once!”

“But …” But we could prove that ectocontamination isn’t a problem NASA should worry about, or else figure out how to get it out of you, and all we would need is a few samples …

Phantom crying at the spot on his arm that Jack had taken a sample from. Telling Ember, ”It’s not all that painful, if they just stick to that.” Griping to the Ghost Zone sky, ”When have they ever listened to anything I’ve said?”

Danny folded his arms. “I don’t want to be your science project, alright? And there’s nothing wrong with me. So just drop it.”

Was his research worth his relationship with his son becoming as strained as his relationship with the ghost boy?

“Okay,” said Jack.

Danny blinked. “What?”

“Okay. It’s dropped, Danno.”

“I … really?” Danny kept blinking at his father. “You wouldn’t even let me out of your ‘spin the crazy out’ idea last year, and that was when Jazz was yelling at you.”

Had Danny himself objected? Jack honestly couldn’t remember. … That probably wasn’t good.

“And, like, I know astronaut training probably would’ve involved something similar anyway, but still,” Danny went on.

“I’m sorry,” Jack told him, his shoulders slumping. The bed creaked beneath him.

Danny sighed heavily. “It’s … it’s okay.” He rubbed his face. “I have better things to do than spend my life fighting with the federal government about ghost stuff.”

Jack frowned for a moment before realizing that Danny thought the apology had just been a statement of sympathy about not getting to be an astronaut. Oh, no, Danny couldn’t be left thinking that not even his parents believed in his dream! “NASA could still work out,” Jack told him.

Danny eyed him, eyebrows slightly raised. “What, you wouldn’t prefer that I take over the family business?”

Jack’s heart skipped a beat. “That’s what you wanna do instead?”

“Why not?” Danny said with a shrug.

Jack couldn’t stop a grin from breaking out on his face. “Danny! That’s great! I knew your Fenton genes would show themselves again at some point! Wait’ll I tell your mother. We’ve got a whole family of ghost hunters!” Even though Jazz only joined in on occasion.

Danny’s mouth quirked up. “We sure do.”

“Not, uh,” Jack said belatedly. “Not that we wouldn’t be just as proud of you for doing something else, as long as it makes you happy.” But taking over the family business! What could be better? “Oh, I’ve gotta make you a new jumpsuit! Whatever happened to your last one? I haven’t seen it in ages.”

“It’s fine, I’ve still got it. But Dad, let me finish out the schoolyear first, okay? Some of these classes are kicking my butt. I’m positive we’ll hunt ghosts together over the summer.”

“I can’t wait! Oh, and speaking of ghosts, your mother and I finally went into the Ghost Zone today!”

“That’s awesome, Dad,” Danny told him. There was less surprise in his voice than Jack would have expected. Well, he and Maddie had been discussing a Ghost Zone trip for some time, often at the kitchen table; Jack supposed it wasn’t that surprising. “Did you get any interesting data?”

“Lots! Oh, uh, I need to go write down my account, actually. I’ll tell you all about it at dinner!”

“Sounds good.”

Jack stood up. “Love ya, Danno,” he said, reaching out to give him a side hug, but Danny stepped back. His son must have wanted to avoid being affectionate right after he’d been seen crying, lest he be perceived as too girly. Jazz would have something disparaging to say about the example of manliness Jack was setting, Jack was sure.

“Love you, too, Dad,” Danny replied nonetheless.

They exchanged a smile, and Jack left, his own smile stretching into a grin as he closed his son’s door behind him. A whole summer of regular ghost hunts with Danny! He could hardly wait!

Oh, man, just wait until Danny met Phantom; maybe they could all go ghost hunting together. If Danny got over his fear of ghosts, those boys were bound to get along.

… … …

What most surprised Jack about the MRI machine was just how loud it was. He, Maddie, and Dr. Andreeva had to be in an adjacent room separated by a thick glass window, and inside the MRI cylinder itself, Phantom was wearing noise-canceling headphones with a little intercom built in.

They’d been scanning for about an hour now. Part of Jack had wanted to head back to the GAV to run more tests on Phantom’s suit, but the greater part of him had wanted to stay in case of any issues. The body-length tube had clearly incited Phantom’s ghostly dislike of confinement, even though nothing would be keeping him from flying out of it and he would have a panic button to stop the scan at any time. Jack still felt better knowing he and Maddie were both nearby to get Phantom out fast if he did press the panic button.

He hadn’t done so yet. The scanning had been going for about an hour, out of the three hours that they’d scheduled. The preliminary full-length scan was done, and Maddie was still staring transfixed at the monitor where it was displayed, her fingers not quite touching the screen as they traced the approximate shape of Phantom’s ghost core. Maddie had been right about it showing up on the scan, although it did so in reverse: the parts of Phantom’s body most closely connected to his core turned out to be far less susceptible to reorientation via magnetic influence, so the MRI image went dark there. The shape of the core wasn’t quite a sphere, like the Fentons had been expecting. It stretched along Phantom’s spinal cord, most concentrated a little above the base, with thinning veins extending all the way up to his brain.

Dr. Andreeva’s own screen was focused only on the brain as she ran more localized test scans to see how effective fMRI would be on the ghost. Jack’s gaze flicked between her and his wife. The Fentons had sent Andreeva their analysis of the oxygenation capacity of Phantom’s venous ectoplasm, but Jack didn’t know enough about human biology to judge how it compared to human blood. Dr. Andreeva was frowning in concentration or deep thought at the scan images. She presumably saw far more in them than Jack did, since MRI scans were the primary research method in her usual studies on how trauma impacted the human nervous system, but maybe Phantom’s scans were too different from a human’s for her to easily assess.

“Time for a break,” Dr. Andreeva announced suddenly. She flipped the intercom on. “Phantom, we’re stopping for now — I’m going to move the couch out of the scanner; you’re free to sit up as soon as it stops moving.”

Maddie finally looked up from her own monitor. “Were you able to see areas of increased activity?” she asked the neuroscientist. The three doctors had a few different ideas between them for what to do with their remaining time after the initial scan, and which idea they went with depended largely on how effective fMRI seemed to be.

“Some, yes,” Andreeva told her, standing up. “We can discuss it in a minute; I’d like to check on our participant.”

Jack stood along with her. He wanted to see how Phantom was doing, too. The test MRIs that the three of them had done earlier in the week on vials of ectoplasm hadn’t shown any damage to the ectoplasm, but this was the first time an actual ghost was being scanned.

Phantom pulled his headphones off even before he was all the way out of the machine. As the scientists reentered the scanning room, he floated up, adjusted himself into a seated position, and settled back down on the cushioned table. His right arm moved to cover his left. He’d had to change into a hospital gown instead of borrowed Fentonworks clothes for this scan, thus exposing part of his scar, though the scar itself looked less pronounced than it had the first time Jack had seen it.

“How are you doing, kiddo?” Jack asked him.

Phantom gave him an exaggerated shrug. “I think I’ve lost any fondness I ever had for mechanical beeping.”

Jack snorted.

Dr. Andreeva asked him, “Does anything feel the least bit off to you? Numb, sore?” When Phantom shook his head, she pressed, “How is your arm?”

“It’s not hurt,” Phantom told her, waving his left arm in proof of his point before hiding it behind his right again. “I honestly didn’t feel anything from the scan.”

“Are you sure? We would be obligated to end the study if there’s even a slight tingle,” Andreeva said, pointedly.

Phantom just shook his head again.

The neuroscientist’s lips pursed. More softly, she said, “Well, please let me know right away if that changes. I’d hate to see the town hero hurt.”

“I’m really just a ghost with a weird obsession,” Phantom told her with a self-effacing smile.

Dr. Andreeva raised her eyebrows. “You saved my neighbor a few months back.”

“Oh, well, I’m sure whatever ghost it was —”

“Not from a ghost,” she interrupted him. “From an electrical fire. I don’t know that she’d have made it out, otherwise. You even went back for her puppy.”

Phantom shrugged with his palms up. “Hey, getting the dog out was just self-preservation. Puppy ghosts are a nightmare.”

Dr. Andreeva smiled for the first time since the scanning had started. Phantom did tend to have that effect on people. “Is that so?”

“All of a puppy’s excitability plus ghost powers and one hundred times the strength?” said Phantom. He pantomimed a shudder. “It’s rough,” he barked.

Jack burst out laughing at the pun. Phantom grinned at him.

Maddie, finally entering from the control room with a confused frown, asked, “Jack, do you remember what Jazz said she’d be doing today? She just sent a message to the group with me and the Red Huntress saying that she was running early and planned to give the park a sweep.”

“Oh, uh, that’s a meme!” Phantom said quickly. All three of the scientists turned to stare at him. “You know, ‘if you’re early, sweep the park,’ it’s like the new ‘badger badger mushroom snake.’ Uh, I overheard some students at Casper doing it at each other. You can just tell her you’re not familiar with the meme.”

“Alright.” Maddie typed out a reply and sent it. “I don’t know why she thinks I keep up with these memes — Oh, she said that she messaged the wrong group. That makes more sense.” Maddie shook her head fondly and tucked her phone away. “Phantom, can I check your spectral energy readings?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“So, what’s the plan for the next scan?” asked Jack as Maddie brought out her spectral scanner.

Dr. Andreeva was silent for a moment, watching Phantom hold himself still for Maddie’s scan, despite that not being necessary. “We should go over the initial results while we discuss it,” she answered at last. “If it wouldn’t bother you to wait here, Phantom?”

The ghost shrugged again. “Hey, I’m just along for the ride.” He glanced at Maddie. “Normal range?”

“For you, yes,” Maddie told him, examining her scanner readout. “If you’re feeling alright too, then I don’t think there’s any concern. Would you like the book back?”

“Yes, please.”

Maddie fetched the copy of The Warrior’s Apprentice that she’d brought for Phantom to entertain himself with during any wait times. He seemed to be enjoying the novel so far, which must be delighting Maddie. She had pushed that book relentlessly on Jack and Vlad back in college.

Phantom accepted the novel, settled back on the MRI examination table’s — the couch’s, as Andreeva had called it — numerous pillows, and held the book open over his head. The scientists retreated to the adjoining room. Dr. Andreeva closed the door behind them, soundproofing the space.

Before the Fentons could start discussing next steps for the MRI scan, the neuroscientist asked them, “What is Phantom getting out of all of this?”

Maddie blinked. “Out of our research?” At Andreeva’s nod, she said, “Well, knowing how his physical form works will certainly make it easier for us to patch him up if he comes to us injured in the future, although I hope that won’t happen.”

Dr. Andreeva nodded again, the strain in her expression softening. “Was this his idea, then?”

“Oh, well, no. Jack and I are primarily researchers, not medics. Phantom is one of the most complex ghosts we’ve ever seen — studying him like this has been a dream come true.”

Andreeva’s brow furrowed, her eyes flicking between them. “What is Phantom to you, exactly?”

“He’s our ally!” Jack answered at once, smiling proudly.

“And that means …?”

“Well, there’s a lotta specifics in this big document we worked out, but the gist of it is we have each other’s backs. Help each other take care of dangerous ghosts, and all.” Look out for one another, Jack thought, but that wasn’t an official part of the alliance aside from during ghost emergencies, so he didn’t add it aloud.

The neuroscientist settled into a chair. “How does the research that you’re doing factor into this?”

“Oh, that was the agreement!” Jack explained.

Dr. Andreeva just stared at him.

“Jack, honey, you need to clarify,” Maddie prompted.

“Oh. Well, Maddie and I really wanted to run more tests on him, and he really wanted the alliance, so we talked it over for a few days and agreed on the alliance in exchange for him participating in our research.”

“He’s doing this so you don’t shoot at him?!” Andreeva nearly yelled, then cast an anxious glance at the window into the adjoining room. The soundproofing wasn’t perfect, after all, but Phantom still looked absorbed in his book and didn’t react as though he’d heard them.

“No, for a whole alliance, and he only agreed to give the research a try! He’s allowed to back out any time he’s uncomfortable; we all went over the consent forms,” Maddie reminded her.

“And what happens then?” Dr. Andreeva pressed. “You keep your alliance even if he backs out of your research, or both end together?”

The question was met with silence.

After a moment, Jack admitted, “We, uh … haven’t really thought about that.”

Maddie, concern creeping its way onto her face, said, “But we aren’t hurting him …”

Dr. Andreeva let out a harsh breath. “That depends on how similarly his nervous system develops to a human’s. The scans certainly look similar.” Pushing her hands up underneath her glasses, she massaged the area around her eyes.

Maddie frowned, clearly disturbed. “But MRIs are a safe technique. We tested it on ectoplasm, and they’ve been approved for human research for decades. His spectral readings are normal, and he said he didn’t feel anything —”

“I’m not convinced he wouldn’t lie on that point, but that’s not what I’m referring to,” Dr. Andreeva interrupted.

“Is he okay?” Jack cut in, anxiety worming through his gut. “What’d you see on the scan? Does he have some kind of, of extreme ghost cancer?” Oh, man, if the CT scan had caused that —

Dr. Andreeva snorted. In a milder voice, she answered, “No, nothing like that. How familiar are you with brain activity scans?”

“Not very,” Maddie admitted.

“Not at all,” Jack admitted in turn.

The neuroscientist sighed tiredly and gestured at her screen. The most recent brain fMRI was still displayed, with the brightest regions sitting in the lower center.

“His amygdala was extremely active during the scan,” she explained. “The rest of his hippocampus as well, to a lesser degree. If we compare them to a human adolescent’s, then they’re both larger than average, but not as much as I expected they might be. Certainly not as large as they should be if they were this active all the time.”

“What does that mean?” Jack barely kept the question from coming out as a whine.

“It depends on the degree of similarity to a human nervous system, and even in that case, it could mean a few different things, but considering the circumstances, I’m inclined to interpret it as terror.”

Maddie blinked. “Oh. Well, ghosts do tend to get a little claustrophobic when they can’t move around as freely, and since emotion is crucial to how they sustain themselves, it would make sense that a mild fear would look far more intense than it is.”

Dr. Andreeva frowned sharply. “It would be irresponsible for us, as scientists, to assume offhand that that’s all that’s going on.”

Jack stilled, the Ghost of Time’s warning echoing suddenly through his mind: “As scientists, I expect you to listen to data. As humans, I expect you to listen to the wisdom of your fellows. Listen well.”

“What …” Jack began slowly, still frozen, “what did you mean, ‘the circumstances?’”

Dr. Andreeva turned to him and raised her eyebrows. “Your alliance with him is now, what, two weeks old?”

Running back the calendar mentally, Jack was shocked to realize that she was right. Had it really only been two weeks?

“Compared to well over a year of public threats of far less consensual and more invasive research,” Andreeva continued. “I highly doubt that I would want the two of you taking any kind of look at my insides, in his place, although I might accept it as a potential danger if it would stave off to the much more certain dangers of being shot at.”

Listen to the wisdom of your fellows.

Oh.

Oh, no, no, no. Jack hadn’t meant to — neither of the Fentons had meant to — and they’d been so sure that Phantom would just up and vanish on them if anything they did was too uncomfortable for him, since he wouldn’t be restrained. But Phantom didn’t run away from fights when he was hurt, even when he had a clear path out, did he?

“And even if it is claustrophobia — and I don’t think we could call it mild in that case, whatever the mechanism behind intensifying its appearance on the scans turns out to be — repeated triggering of fears, especially intense ones, has a degrading effect on nervous system health, not to mention overall health. I could show you the studies.”

Listen to data.

Listen well.

Jack swallowed.

They had to put a pin in their research, ectoscientific breakthroughs or no. Jack opened his mouth, wondering how he was going to express to his wife the wild thoughts running through his mind, especially considering how much he would surely sound like he’d gotten possessed by the clock ghost —

“Jack, we need to stop,” said Maddie, before he could say anything at all.

Jack blinked and gave a humorless chuckle. “Yeah.” He and Maddie always ended up the same page somehow, didn’t they?

Maddie closed her mouth on her own unnecessary explanation, and Jack reached out to squeeze her hand.

Dr. Andreeva slumped forward with a sigh of relief. “Thank you. I really didn’t want to throw out the data we’ve already taken.”

“What?” Jack’s eyebrows rose. Why would she —?

“Oh,” said Maddie, quietly. “Because of ethical concerns?”

Jack winced.

Dr. Andreeva nodded. “I can justify keeping the existing scans if we stop here. Gathering this information as a reference in case Phantom ever needs medical help in the future is a compelling reason for the basic scans — if you actually intend to provide that?”

“Of course,” Maddie said at once.

Dr. Andreeva smiled, though there was only a hint of warmth in it. “I will be keeping tabs on your research from here on out,” she warned. The Fentons nodded, and Andreeva shook her head to herself. “My own penance for not asking sooner what participant agreement you’d come to and not thinking about how much influence you have over him.”

Jack frowned. “What do you mean by that?” It hadn’t sounded like she’d been talking about the possible threats the Fentons could make, at the end.

Dr. Andreeva raised her eyebrows. “One thing these scans do tell us is that it isn’t wrong to compare Phantom to a human teenager,” she said, gesturing at her screen again. “He’s dedicated himself to protecting against ghost attacks. The GIW has proven themselves incompetent in that department — the Red Huntress less so, but I highly doubt that she’s older than college-age.” She gave the Fentons a pointed look that was softened slightly by the hint of a wry smile on her lips. “Who else, then, would Phantom look to for his role models?”

… … …

The Fentons agreed that the medical campus courtyard they had to cross to return to the GAV would be the best place to have a talk with Phantom. The space was wide open to the sky and should be reasonably private sound-wise, given the current wind conditions, but the number of windows overlooking the courtyard would provide plenty of more distant witnesses, which Phantom seemed to prefer having around.

When Jack had asked Phantom where they should go for post-exam ice cream as they were heading in for the MRI, Phantom had said that he appreciated the offer but would prefer to simply head home afterwards this time. Maddie lured him back to the GAV with them with a request to check whether the ghost-seekers that they’d modified to ignore Phantom’s ectosignature worked as intended, instead. He’d agreed easily, apparently in a good mood after the news that they were done early with the MRIs.

Jack stepped heavily along the courtyard’s path and wondered how in the world to broach the, “we talked it over and decided we should perhaps stop traumatizing you” conversation. He ended up not having to.

“So, what’s the research plan for next weekend?” Phantom asked halfway across the courtyard, glancing back over his shoulder at Maddie and Jack.

Maddie swallowed loudly enough that Jack heard it. “Actually,” she answered, “we were thinking of taking a break from research tests.”

Phantom nodded evenly. “Need to analyze your data before collecting more? About how long should that take you?”

Maddie stopped walking. Jack followed suit.

Phantom turned around at the sudden lack of footsteps behind him, his expression halfway between puzzlement and concern. “Uh, did I say something wrong?”

“No, no!” Jack told him. “We just thought we should stop more permanently.”

Phantom’s eyes widened. “You’re calling off our alliance?”

So Dr. Andreeva had been right about why Phantom might not tell them to stop a scan. Jack’s gut twisted.

“No!” Maddie exclaimed, a heartbeat before Jack did the same.

“Okay …” Phantom took a slow, calming breath, and puzzlement returned to his expression. “What’s going on, then? Are you planning to catch other ghosts to test instead? Because between the two options, I’d kinda prefer you stick with the consenting subject.”

“Public threats of far less consensual and more invasive research …” The sick feeling in Jack’s gut was not getting any weaker.

Maddie shook her head. “No, we need to update our ethics guidelines before any new studies.”

“I thought you didn’t want to rush that process,” said Phantom.

“We don’t,” Maddie confirmed.

Phantom looked back and forth between the Fentons. “Okay, I feel like I’m missing something here.”

“Well, you’re … you’re not really comfortable with the research, are you, kiddo?” asked Jack.

Phantom half-rolled his eyes at them. “Uh, no? Wasn’t the deal that I would give being a willing research subject a go even though I’m really not comfortable with it and you would give being allied to a ghost a go even though you’re really not comfortable with it?”

“Well, now we have given both a try,” Maddie said evenly, despite looking as if a bucket of ice had just been dumped down her back.

Jack put a steadying hand on Maddie’s shoulder and nodded firmly to Phantom. “Yeah! And the allies bit has been good so far. So we should keep that! But maybe rethink the research part.”

Phantom stared at them for a few seconds, then asked, more quietly, “You’re serious?”

Maddie gave him a sad smile. “We’re your allies, moonbeam,” she told him. “We’re supposed to keep you from getting hurt, not cause it.”

“I mean, the MRI didn’t hurt me, really,” Phantom said, reaching up to rub the back of his neck. “I would’ve told you to stop if I couldn’t handle it. You promised you would let me, and all.”

Jack just frowned at him, considering what he knew of the ghost boy. “You aren’t very good at telling people to stop, are you?” he guessed.

Phantom’s glowing eyes met his for long enough to leave an afterimage in Jack’s own eyes. Then the ghost burst out laughing.

“Oh man, you have no idea,” Phantom agreed.

Maddie’s smile relaxed into something more earnestly felt. “Then for right now, that’s our job,” she told Phantom. “We’re telling you to stop participating in research tests that scare you; it’s not good for you.”

“As my allies, huh?” said Phantom with a small smile of his own.

“Exactly.”

“I guess I should listen, then.”

Faint goose honks reached their ears from overhead, and all three of them looked up to watch a wedge of the birds fly past, dark against the cloudy noontime sky. A gust of wind buffeted them, and they veered downward as one cohesive unit, disappearing behind the west medical building.

Still looking up, Phantom told the Fentons, “Well, uh … thanks.”

“Anytime, fellow Ghost Getter,” said Jack.

Phantom shook his head with a smile. “You know, it really is time we got a new name. ‘Ghost Getters’ only became official — I mean, as official as we get — when I allied with Red, and I’m sure we can do better than that.”

Jack felt his face light up. “Oh! We can be the Ghostkateers! Maddie and I have already got a battle song for that one! Remember, Mads? G-H-O —”

Phantom held his hands up to stop Jack with a mildly horrified expression on his face. “On second thought, ‘Ghost Getters’ has its charms.”

Jack pouted, but Maddie laughed.

Phantom yawned.

“Tired?” Maddie asked him, fondly.

“Yeah, a bit. The weekend is usually when I catch up on sleep.”

And on top of that, he’d just spent about an hour straight fighting panic, if Dr. Andreeva’s assessment was right. That would tire anyone out. “We can check our ghost-seeker modifications another time,” Jack offered.

“That’s probably a good idea,” Phantom agreed with another yawn. “Honestly, I’m so tired, ‘s no use trying to get anything else done right now.” Twin bursts of snow shot up from his hands and drifted back down. The Fentons chuckled. Phantom crouched in preparation to take off.

“Phantom!” Jack called.

The ghost paused. “Hm?”

Jack swallowed. “Thanks for putting up with us, yeah?”

Phantom blinked at him. Then he smiled, and despite the snowflakes clinging to his hair and shoulders, it was the warmest smile Jack had ever seen.

“Thanks for always being worth it,” Phantom told them. He flew off then, well before either of the Fentons could process through to a response.

The ghost was long gone by the time Jack’s arms reached out in a belated impulse to gather his young ally up into them. Maddie noticed, and she turned in towards Jack to hug him in Phantom’s stead. Jack held her tight.

There was a faint rumble in Maddie’s chest that it took Jack a few seconds to recognize as quiet chuckling. “What’s got you laughing?” he asked.

“Two weeks,” Maddie replied.

“Huh?”

Maddie shook her head against her husband’s chest. “Decades of study that told us over and over to be cautious and objective about ghosts,” she said, “and two weeks working with Phantom before all of our caution and objectivity is gone.”

“Ha.” Jack smiled and looked back at the sky. “Do you miss what life was like three weeks ago?” he asked. Life had certainly been much simpler, back before a drained and destabilizing Phantom had crashed into the Fentons’ chemical cabinet.

“No,” said Maddie, her face turning up towards his. Jack looked down in time to watch her smile grow, slowly but surely, as she contemplated her answer. “I can’t say that I miss it at all.”

Chapter Text

A side benefit of the alliance with his parents was that if Danny ever needed them out of the house, a quick word from Phantom about its being a good time to patrol but his being too busy to do it himself would send them immediately shooting off in the GAV.

Alone in Fentonworks, Danny spun himself in one of the wheeled chairs in his parents’ lab while he read The Warrior’s Apprentice. He really should’ve given this book more of a chance back when his mom had first tried to interest him in the series, rather than giving up the first time a character’s trip through a wormhole was left all but undescribed. The ghost portal swirled ominously beside him, its door open, but so far only a couple of ectopuses had tried to come through. Danny had been able to kick them back into the Zone without even leaving his chair.

His ghost sense went off again, and he stuck a bookmark into the book and looked up.

A head of white hair peeked out of the portal, glanced both ways, and then smirked at him. “Someone isn’t taking his welcoming duties seriously. No one was there to meet me on the Zone side of the portal, so I had to risk poking my head into a ghost hunting lab —”

“— Which you totally could have done invisibly, since I opened the portal door —”

“— After coming allllll this way just to check on my dumb cousin and kick anyone’s butt who’s messing with him.”

Danny grinned. “It’s good to see you, Dani.”

“Of course it is. I’m the best,” Danielle agreed, flying the rest of the way into the lab and smacking the controls to close and lock the portal. The genetic lock, of course, read her as Danny. “Here’s your Thermos back, by the way. What were you doing with your parents in the Zone when Clockwork caught up with you?”

She tossed the Fenton Thermos to Danny, who grimaced, uncomfortably reminded of Clockwork’s little revelation about the portal accident. But today was about Danielle, and Clockwork’s choices and schemes didn’t have anything to do with her. Danny shook his head hard and answered, “I was giving them a tour, actually. We’re allies now.”

Dani beamed at him. “Congrats, Danny!”

Danny didn’t know why that made him flush. “Thanks,” he said.

“So, how’s it been going?”

“It’s been … it’s been nice. Weird, but nice. I, uh, haven’t worked up to telling them, but I mean to. Eventually.” Preferably before summer, or else he’d have to get a lot better at duplication for when his parents wanted to go ghost-hunting with both of him at once.

“They still haven’t figured it out, huh?” asked Dani, her feet touching ground for the first time since she entered the room. “I don’t see how. You aren’t subtle about your ghost powers.”

“Oh, you’re one to talk,” Danny chided her.

Dani grinned. “I’m not trying to maintain a secret identity. The superhero schtick is your thing. Speaking of, where are your sidekicks at?”

“My friends aren’t sidekicks!”

Dani’s grin widened, and she glanced down at the Fenton Watch they’d given her so that she could keep track of what time it was on this side of the Fenton Portal.

Danny narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “Were you timing how long it took you to annoy me into raising my voice?”

“Into throwing your hands up, actually,” said Dani. “I didn’t quite beat my record. I’ll try harder next time.”

“Hey!”

“But seriously, where is everyone? Don’t tell me I’m gonna be stuck hanging out with just you today.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “Sam’s doing an ambulance ride-along, and Tucker has a family thing. They’ll take you to dinner tonight, though. Valerie’s going to be meeting up with my parents soon to, uh, test contingencies,” and boy was he trying hard not to think about that, even though he’d have to join them later, “and Jazz is waiting for us on the roof of Casper —”

“Race ya!” said Dani, and shot off through the ceiling before Danny could reply.

“Oh, you’re on.” Danny transformed and chased after her.

His cousin had gotten faster over the months. Flying around from portal to portal was good for building endurance, it seemed. Fortunately, chasing after rogue ghosts all the time was also good for building endurance, and Danny caught up to Danielle and then pulled ahead just as the high school came into view.

As expected, Jazz was sitting on the rooftop, her back against the flagpole as she read some psychology book. She’d been given a key to the school after too many of her tutoring students had complained about the periodic explosions interrupting study sessions at Fentonworks, so that she could do her tutoring in the school library instead. Neither of them were quite sure whether Lancer realized he’d given her a master key instead of just the key to the front door, but they weren’t about to look that gift horse in the mouth. If Danny ever got injured badly enough during school that he needed one of his friends to help patch him up somewhere they wouldn’t be seen, the master key (and the various copies they’d made of it) made that far easier.

Danny grinned and looked back over his shoulder as he touched down. “Hurry up, slowpoke!” he called over the few meters separating him and Dani. Dani didn’t reply. Danny turned back around.

An exact copy of Danielle popped into visibility right in front of his face. “Boo!”

“Aah!” Danny jumped back.

The other Dani caught up, fused back together with the one in front of him, and started laughing at him. Behind her, Jazz smiled.

Danny just stared. “You can duplicate!” he said.

“Sure can,” said Dani, easily splitting off two duplicates, then two more, all with matching grins.

Danny’s eyes widened. He’d never managed more than three duplicates, and that only in the middle of some of his more intense fights, when his entire focus was on saving his town. Even after a good year and a half of practice, duplication didn’t come easy to him. Jazz theorized that less-than-stellar self-esteem and lingering negative feelings about his ghost half were getting in the way of him being able to make copies of his core, because of course she did. Dani didn’t have the same problem, it seemed.

“You should give Danny some pointers. He’s still working on that power,” Jazz told her in an upbeat tone.

“Really? It’s not all that hard,” said Dani, her five voices chorusing together. Her duplicates all flew a loop around Danny before fusing back into one.

Danny bit back a comment about Vlad’s influence. Dani, understandably, had even more issues with being compared to the fruitloop than she did with being compared to her progenitor.

“Yeah, alright, you little prodigy,” Danny said instead, making sure that the level of sarcasm in his voice would let her know he was only half-joking. “You can show me your superior ways after you’ve talked with Jazz.”

With equal sarcasm and equal fondness, Dani replied, “I’m not sure that even I’m capable of getting anything besides an ectoblast through your thick skull, but I’ll give it my best shot.”

Danny rolled his eyes but smiled nonetheless.

Jazz cleared her throat and gestured for them to settle themselves. Danny sat on the roof, but Dani, always more comfortable when she was indulging her ghostly instincts, remained floating just above it. Jazz leaned back against the flagpole again.

“It’s good to see you, Dani,” she finally told their little cousin. “How’s this past month been for you?”

Dani grinned. “It’s been great! I finally found a portal to the Moon!”

“What?!” Danny jerked upright.

“Yeah!” Dani confirmed. “It wasn’t stable enough for me to do more than peek through, but it was definitely the moon! I thiiink it was the Apollo 11 landing site? That’s the one where the flag got knocked over by the blast when they were taking off, right?”

“Is the flag still there? It hasn’t disintegrated? Oh, I guess we don’t know what year you went to, though. How long did the portal stay open?” She’d done it, she’d been to the actual Moon, or at least close enough to see a toppled flag on the surface. The furthest Danny had ever been was Earth’s exosphere. Even at his top speed and with supplemental oxygen, there was only so far he could fly before he needed to sleep.

“Literally less than a minute,” Dani told him. “I was only there at the right time at all because Clockwork gave me a hint to go that way. But this means there are ghost portals out in space! At least at the sites where humans have been and left emotional energy at! Just you watch, I’m gonna beat you to extraplanetary exploration, NASA boy!”

“No contest,” said Danny, not quite managing to keep bitterness out of his voice.

Dani’s smile fell.

Danny immediately shook his head. “No, no, I just meant literally, like, I’m not going to become an astronaut, so there’s no competition. I’m really happy that you’ll make it there through your portals, Dani — that’s amazing! You’re gonna have to tell me all about it.” He managed a smile for her.

Danielle just blinked at him. “Why aren’t you gonna be an astronaut?” she asked, her voice smaller than usual.

Danny shrugged and looked away. “Too many things in the way, is all,” he said. “There’s the government’s current attitude towards ectoplasm and ghosts, and all the ways that my health looks concerning compared to a full human’s, and my being stuck in Amity for the next six years or more if I want to keep an eye on everything with the Fenton Portal, and … I just don’t think it was meant to be.” He was meant to be some kind of mediator and dual ambassador between the Living Realms and Infinite Realms, instead. It wasn’t coincidence that he’d ended up like this: Clockwork had been watching, maybe even meddling to make sure this was the timeline that prevailed. The timeline where Danny’s purpose was served here in Amity Park, not out among the stars.

Jazz gave her brother a Look that he unfortunately knew well enough to know that she found what he’d said concerning and intended to have a talk about it later, but not right now, because right now she needed to focus on Dani’s unofficial mental health check-up.

“Oh.” Dani’s shoulders slumped.

“He’s just having a bad week,” Jazz reassured her. “Ask him again in a couple months when he’s had more time to process all the trauma that’s coming unburied and he isn’t so depressed, and he’ll have a different answer.”

“I’m not depressed!” Danny protested.

Jazz raised an eyebrow. “I can pull out my DSM.”

“Jazz, tell me you aren’t lugging around a mental disorders manual in your bag.”

His sister’s lips pursed.

Dani burst out laughing. “You guys are both nuts,” she told them. “You’re lucky that you’ve got me to look out for you.”

Danny crossed his arms. “Says the girl who flew away dramatically after almost destabilizing, twice, and only showed back up when you were halfway to being a puddle of goo or popsicled up from your ice powers coming in or —”

“I’ve grown wiser since then,” Dani said with a haughty sniff. “A life of travel can have that effect on people.”

“Emphasis on ‘can,’” said Danny.

“Kids, kids,” Jazz interrupted them, making a “settle down” gesture.

Danny threw up his hands. “You’re only two years older than me!”

“Physically, maybe.” Jazz tossed her hair back over her shoulder.

Danny rolled his eyes.

Dani giggled at them again.

Jazz returned her attention to the younger half-ghost. “So, the traveling lifestyle is still treating you well, then?” she asked.

“Yup!” Dani answered. “Finding the Moon portal is the only big thing that’s happened since my last visit, really. Oh, I also came in third in a Far Frozen ice tournament!”

“Hey, congrats!” said Danny, who had not yet been unbanned from ice tournaments after destroying the arena that one time.

“That’s awesome, Dani,” Jazz told her. “We’re really proud of you, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Danny confirmed.

Dani’s face melted into that tender smile that always warmed Danny with the sense that he was doing right by his cousin-slash-genetic-descendant.

“I’m doing well,” Dani told them with more earnestness in her voice. “I’d tell you guys if I wasn’t, promise. The traveling’s been really fun, and I’m getting even better at sensing how long a portal’s gonna stay open for, and I haven’t seen Vlad in so long that I’m pretty sure he’s just written me off or forgotten about me.”

“His loss,” Danny told her. “His massive loss. Not that that fruitloop deserves to know someone as cool as you, anyway.”

Dani turned that smile on him again, and even Jazz gave him a subtle thumbs-up. The main reason that Jazz kept him around during these unofficial check-ups was because Dani seemed to have an easier time talking about Vlad when Danny was nearby. At least Danny’s constant and glaringly obvious desire to punch Vlad’s punchable face was good for emotional support.

“So, tell me more about your trips?” Jazz prompted Dani. “Did you meet with any interesting people?”

“Oh, yeah! I met this one lady in Greece …”

The conversation continued for a while, Jazz getting Dani to relive the good moments from this past month while at the same time gently prompting her to bring up whatever less-good thoughts or events were still bothering her. Dani wasn’t much for dwelling on the negative, but she did sink into a somber quiet after telling them about a ghost family she’d met whose four older members had managed to produce three offspring between them in relatively quick succession, since combining four jettisoned duplicates into a new ghost, rather than just two, meant that each component duplicate needed less power to initially sustain.

“It was cool. The kids were all pretty similar, exact same components and all, but they were also all different people. It … made me think about all the other clones Vlad made.”

Danny suppressed a wince. “They never developed stable cores,” he reminded her. They never really became people to begin with. Not like Dani. A fourteen-year-old’s core, even a madman’s attempted copy of one, was not meant to form within an embryo; the strain of aging up a mostly-human body to create the physical form that it needed was just too much. Their best guess as to what had happened with Dani was that Vlad had given her growth more leeway, and her developing core and body had achieved a nearly stable equilibrium at a few years younger than Danny was. With the other clones, having realized from Dani’s example that getting an exact copy of Danny wasn’t guaranteed, Vlad hadn’t let equilibration happen naturally. Or as close to “naturally” as creating a half-ghost clone could come.

“But we don’t know how close they got,” Dani argued, looking distraught. This was hardly a new argument, but its familiarity didn’t make it any less painful. “They could talk a little and follow orders, and maybe if they hadn’t been pushed so hard on using their powers, or if we’d given them ecto-dejecto too, or anything, they would’ve been okay!”

“Dani, your case was different —” Danny tried.

“I don’t want to hear that I’m just different,” Dani snapped. “Vlad always said I was different from the others, a real daughter. But in the end, we were all just the same to him!”

The silence following Dani’s shout made such a sharp and immediate contrast that time almost seemed to have frozen. Danny kept himself from reaching to check that none of Clockwork’s medallions had been dropped onto his neck. Quietly, the wind stirred the dirt on the rooftop, proving that the world around them yet moved.

Jazz smiled sadly. “It is good to be careful when someone tells you you’re more special than others like you,” she said. “A lot of the time, they’re manipulating you. Or sometimes they’re really talking about a version of you that they made up, and they don’t care about all the parts of you that don’t fit with their imagined version.”

Danny looked away, a weight settling in his stomach. Because wasn’t that exactly what he was still afraid of when it came to telling his parents? That they would either say being half-human made him a special exception from all other ghosts, or else outright dismiss Phantom’s being any real part of him at all?

“But Danny’s not trying to say you’re more special, Dani, just that based on what he was able to see, there were things that made you different from the others. I never met them, so I can’t weigh in on that,” Jazz went on. “We don’t know what could have been, and we probably never will. If it helps you to grieve the others as siblings that could have been, then do. But please remember that what happened to them isn’t your fault.”

Dani was silent a moment, eyes downcast, before shrugging it off. “You know, I’m pretty sure Vlad was manipulating me and talking about a made-up version of me. And lying to himself on top of it,” she said, retreating to the more comfortable topic of Vlad-bashing.

Thankfully, Jazz allowed the retreat. “Well, my parents do say he’s an overachiever.”

Both Phantoms snickered.

“Oh, is it dumping-on-Masters hours? My favorite time of day,” said a voice behind Danny.

Danny jumped.

Dani grinned. “Valerie!” she said, flying at a large smudge in the air behind Danny that quickly resolved itself into Val. The latest upgrades Val had gotten Technus to make to her suit didn’t let her become completely invisible, but she could come close.

Dani wrapped her arms around the older girl’s middle.

“Hey, Dani,” Valerie said fondly.

“Hey,” Danny replied at the same time as his cousin, just to be annoying. (Val had deliberately snuck up on him; a little willful-misinterpretation payback was only fair.)

Valerie rolled her eyes at him. To Dani, she said, “You’re looking good. How’ve you been since I last saw you?”

“Good! You missed me telling Danny and Jazz about the new portals I found!”

“Yeah, sorry,” Valerie replied, settling down next to Jazz. Jazz casually draped an arm over her. “Had to meet up with Danny’s parents.”

“Did it go okay?” Danny asked. He didn’t quite manage to keep his nervousness out of his voice.

Val nodded. “The emergency release on their new thing works. I gave them copies of most of my other contingency stuff.” She paused. “All I said about the ghost-form lock was that it would keep you from getting through shields, and I told them not to try it outside of an emergency so you don’t build some kind of immunity, but they might realize that’s nonsense at some point.”

Danny shrugged. “As long as it keeps them from messing with it for the next month or so, it’s fine.”

Valerie gave him an unimpressed look. “You’re planning to drag this out for another month?”

“No! I mean, maybe? I don’t know.” Danny ran his hands through his hair.

Dani’s eyes lit with mischief as she caught on to what they were talking about. “What’re you waiting for, Danny?” she asked. “I mean, you already carried the secret to your grave. That’s enough avoidance for most people. Break the mold, be the dead man who does tell tales!”

Valerie winced at the death jokes, but Jazz, officially resigned to them, snorted.

“I will,” Danny told his cousin. “And I’m not being avoidant! It’s just … I really don’t want the fact that half-ghosts exist getting out to the GIW, and my dad is terrible at keeping secrets —”

“That’s not true,” Jazz interrupted him. “I’ve been testing how our parents do at keeping secrets for the past few months, and they’ve actually done well. Dad’s really good at giving off the impression that he tells you everything, but that’s only because he talks so much. He knows how to change the topic to avoid anything that he knows he shouldn’t talk about.”

“Even when the topic is ghosts?” Danny argued, crossing his arms.

Jazz rolled her eyes. “I mean, the topic he switched to would probably also be ghost-related, but yes.”

Danny swallowed as all three of them stared expectantly at him. “Okay, but, like, it’s the end of the schoolyear and I’ve got a million projects to finish, and they’re gonna have so many questions that they won’t leave me alone for a second —”

“Now you’re just manufacturing excuses,” said Val.

Danny glared at her. “I’m not!”

Dani laughed. “Kids, kids,” she chided them, her tone perfectly mimicking Jazz’s.

Danny pointed at her. “You’re only a year old!”

“I am wise beyond my year,” said Dani. She spread her hands patronizingly.

“Pffft,” said Valerie. “Anyway, are you guys all done here? Is it time for ice cream?”

Dani perked up. “Ice cream?”

“Yeah, Danny’s buying.”

“My poor budget,” Danny lamented.

“Get a paying job already, you hooligan,” Val said unsympathetically.

“Are we going to Ben and Jerry’s? How much can I order?” Dani asked, turning her pleading gaze on Danny. He could only hope his own pleading gaze was half as effective. He was going to be broke after this.

Jazz shook her head fondly. “Well, I guess we are done here then. And no, not Ben and Jerry’s, a local shop called the Creepy Creamery. If you’re up for going somewhere new?” She shifted onto Valerie’s hoverboard as she spoke.

Dani grinned. “Always.”

… … …

“I want another one,” said Dani.

Danny dropped his hands palm-up onto the plastic table. “You’ve already had three!”

“But it’s called the Phantom special. It was made for me!”

Danny still couldn’t believe the Creepy Creamery had named the milkshake that he’d ordered last time after him. He ought to be getting royalties, or something.

Jazz smiled and rested her hand on Danielle’s shoulder. “Dani, I know you can process more sugar than I can, but I think you may be about to hit your limit. I have some snack bars if you’re still hungry?”

“Ugh, fine.” Dani crossed her arms and sulked while Jazz rifled through her bag.

Valerie tossed the remnants of her own cone into her mouth. Her eyes closed in bliss. Apparently, the pith-looking pieces in the citrus symphony flavor were from kumquats, which had probably just won the Creepy Creamery a new loyal customer in the form of Val.

“Right,” said Val, licking her lips, “we should go meet up with your parents, Ghost Boy.”

Danny nodded and stood, suppressing a shiver. Knowing that the others had ways to counteract his powers if they were ever being used for evil did let him sleep easier at night, but actually testing the countermeasures — having the people he trusted to always have his back playact at taking him down, while he playacted being mind-controlled or else turning into some version of the evil future Phantom who’d decided to become Pariah Dark 2.0 — was literally never fun.

“Aww,” Dani pouted at Val. “You’re leaving already?”

Val gave her a smile. “I’ll be back later. I still have to show you my latest suit upgrades and see what all you’ve learned to do since your last visit. Just need to babysit your cousin for a bit first to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid, like saying he’s totally fine when he’s too concussed to see straight.”

That was one time, Danny silently complained.

Dani nodded sagely. “I get it. I’ll look after Jazz for you while you’re busy.”

“Thank you. Make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid, either.” Val smirked.

“Excuse you, I’m the reasonable one,” Jazz protested.

Valerie just gave her a flat look in response. “You knocked on Masters’s front door to spy on him when you had a gifted hacker and a literally invisible brother at your disposal to do it instead. We’re still trying to get the last of the bloodstream nanobots out of you.”

“I did learn what he was up to!”

“That’s really not relevant to my point.”

Danny was tempted to defend his sister by pointing out that Valerie’s past decisions had notably included both taking up ghost-hunting with gear that a random adult stranger had gifted her and rocketing herself into the exosphere in an unfamiliar suit that she’d had no reason to believe was rated for space travel, but if the four of them got into a worst-prior-decision-a-thon, Danny was going to lose very badly, and he would prefer to avoid that.

“Shouldn’t we, uh, head out?” Danny asked Val instead.

“Yeah, yeah,” Valerie acquiesced. “See you both later. Call in if you see any stronger ghosts while you’re patrolling.”

Danny ruffled his little cousin’s hair. She would actually be the heavy hitter if anything major came up on the ghost front while Danny was recovering from testing the ghostly wail countermeasure, for all that Val would try to give her cover in a fight. Her being a strong enough fighter to stand in for Danny wasn’t about to make him stop treating her like a kid, though.

“Hey!” Dani protested, and swatted his hand away.

“I’m gonna head to the Ghost Zone later,” Danny told her with a smile. He would recuperate faster there, and there were a few Zone things he should check on. “Should be at Dora’s when you’re done with dinner. Swing by before you fly off if you want to spar or anything.”

Dani grinned back at him. “Oh, you’re on.”

Danny and Val headed out through the gate in the Creamery’s outdoor seating area. It was pretty empty, the weather being brisk enough that most people without some degree of ectocontamination preferred to be indoors, so they didn’t have any trouble sneaking back into the alleyway that they’d originally landed in and transforming.

Valerie took off first, and Danny followed her. She aimed them towards the fields outside of town, in the opposite direction from Fentonworks. Danny had argued before that anything wail-related should be tested inside the Zone, but his parents had argued back that they were likeliest to have to use their countermeasures in the Real World, so this was where they should test them. Fortunately, there were a handful of still-abandoned fields on the edges of the town limits. If Danny was remembering his local history right, they’d mostly been used back in Prohibition Era, when Amity Park’s proximity to the Mississippi River and liminality-boosted ability to hide things from outsiders had made it a temporary capital of whisky production.

Val flew at a slower speed than usual, which the reluctant side of Danny appreciated. He drifted closer to her. She cast him a sideways glance. The more densely packed buildings below them gave way to large lawns, which would in turn give way to the old fields.

“So …” Val began. “What’s actually keeping you from telling them at this point, besides worrying they’ll be mad or whatever? Because they definitely like you both ways now. Your dad was trying to get the thing they made to trigger on him just to make extra sure it wouldn’t hurt you, even though the mechanical tests said it wouldn’t.”

Danny looked away. “It’s … complicated.”

Val’s voice flattened sarcastically. “Is it really?”

“Yes! They’re, it’s, I, I don’t know what they’ll think, okay?”

Val exhaled something halfway between a snort and a sigh. “I can tell you what they’ll think. Your parents will be overjoyed that you’re a ghost-hunter and good at it. They won’t care about anything else. Well, as long as you lead with the fact that you aren’t really dead.”

Danny forced himself to look back at Val, despite the trace of bitterness in her voice making him want to do anything but. “How, uh,” he tried. “How are things going with your dad these days?” The last he’d heard, they’d been decent, but Danny didn’t exactly ask often. Val had never completely let go of her anger over his revealing her to Damon.

“Eh. Alright. Letting him work on and monitor my suit has helped.” She shrugged. More quietly, she added, “I wonder if that’s what reconciled us in the … other timeline.”

Danny had, at Jazz’s very firm prompting, mentioned that the future Valerie and future Damon in Phantom Dark’s timeline had worked as a team, with Damon acting as Valerie’s main ghost-hunting support. Danny hadn’t believed that anything good would come of talking about that timeline, but that specific detail, at least, seemed to have helped Val.

“I’m glad,” Danny offered.

Val sighed. “Yeah. It’s an improvement. He still doesn’t get why I do this, though. And he refuses to believe that I actually know what I’m doing.”

“I think that’s just what most parents are like,” said Danny.

“Not yours,” countered Val.

“I did say ‘most.’ Mine aren’t exactly normal.”

Val cast her gaze at the barren-but-for-weeds field they were descending towards and the bright teal and orange shapes waiting with an armored RV at the far end of it. “No arguments there.”

They crossed the field and alit on the ground without another word. It brought Danny some comfort to see that neither of his parents were armed, unless you counted the GAV waiting behind them, wheels muddy from its off-road trek to the edge of this field. The Fentons’ shedding of weapons around Danny’s ghost form had been gradual, probably in part because they habitually kept at least one or two ectoweapons on at all times. Eventually, though, they seemed to have realized that disarming all the way was an important statement of trust.

“Phantom! Huntress!” Jack greeted. “Were ya able to take care of whatever was keeping Phantom busy?”

“It wasn’t a ghost problem, don’t worry,” Val told him.

Maddie looked thoughtful. Danny wondered what his mom believed he’d been up to. She was well aware by now that he did more with his time than just ghost-hunting, since he’d taken to dropping by home as Phantom during his lunch breaks to get math help. (Not that his mom wouldn’t have helped him as Danny, of course, but throughout the past two years, his parents had both been so easily distracted into monologuing about their own research every time they’d given him homework help. At least when he was Phantom, his mom was more aware of when her tangents about ghost research crossed the line into tactlessness.)

“And yeah, I’m free for the rest of the day now,” Danny added. “As long as you’re still up for covering the Ember concert tonight?”

“Of course,” said his mom. She smiled. “It’s no trouble. Her music is quite good.”

Et tu, Mom? thought Danny.

Jack clapped his hands once, excited as ever to try out a new invention. “So! Should we give the Fenton Sonic Suppressor a try?”

Of course his dad had given the thing a name. Danny shook his head to himself. “Right. Yeah. Procedure?” he asked, turning to Valerie.

Val “hmm”ed thoughtfully. “Basic functionality test first, by itself,” she answered. “We need to see if the concept’s actually good. Then stress test, then dodging, since there’s not much point in an active maneuverability test if it can’t stand up to the stress of ectoblastasts.”

Danny nodded and held his hand out. Valerie produced the usual blindfold from a compartment of her suit and gave it to him. The blindfold had two thick, molded cups around the eye parts themselves and the annoying kind of phase-proofing that meant the whole thing automatically phased with him. At least it wasn’t uncomfortable. Danny grimaced and started tying it on.

“What’s that for?” he heard his dad ask, sounding confused and a little concerned.

“For keeping the ectoplasmic engineering prodigy here from accidentally figuring out exactly how your suppressor thing works,” Val answered.

“I’m not an engineering prodigy,” Danny protested.

Val snorted. “You forgetting why we had to add the blindfold to most of our testing procedures in the first place?”

“You engineer?!” both of Danny’s parents exclaimed at once.

Danny just shrugged. “I mean, I got your Thermoses to work, didn’t I? I don’t do anything big, though.”

“You made my shields last a lot longer,” Val reminded him.

“That wasn’t big, that was just tweaking them to be less cartoonishly energy-inefficient.”

With obvious hopefulness, Danny’s dad asked, “Do you want another ecto-engineer to look over your suit, Huntress?”

“Nah, I’ve got people,” Val dismissed the offer, apparently not yet ready to admit to someone new that her suit didn’t exactly detach from her, even though doing so might net her more upgrades. Not that Danny didn’t sympathize with her reluctance.

Danny finished with the last of the blindfold’s stretchy ties and shook his head hard to check that the blindfold was secure.

“Looks good,” Valerie commented. “Try shapeshifting.”

Danny froze.

No. No, that was Val’s voice, not K or O’s; he wasn’t chained down, and he definitely wasn’t in a van. Breeze and birdsong surrounded him. Val just wanted to check that he wasn’t going to drop the blindfold by accident during the wail suppressor test, not, like, find a starting point from which to bore down to his ghost core.

“Phantom?” His mom’s voice, concerned.

“I’m fine,” Danny told her. “Just don’t love being down a sense.”

“Is the blindfold really necessary?” Maddie asked, presumably to Valerie.

“It’s fine,” Danny tried to reassure his mom. “I’m fine. It’s unpleasant, not, like, terrifying. Here.” He stretched the shape of his head, not to the limit of his abilities but enough to make sure the blindfold wouldn’t fall off unless he was deliberately trying to shake it. “It’ll be fine. Let’s get this over with.”

“Tap out if you need to,” Val reminded him sternly. “You probably won’t be able to speak.”

“I think you mean clap out,” said Danny, clapping his hands once to demonstrate their “hit the release” signal for his parents.

Val sighed. “I swear,” she said, the quality of her voice changing as if she’d turned to face his parents instead of him, “we went with a clap because it’s visually and audibly obvious, not because it’s a pun.”

Danny smiled. “No, it was definitely because of the pun. I’m winning Red over to puns.”

“You are not, you menace.”

“She’s in denial,” Danny stage-whispered in the direction of his parents’ voices. He stepped away towards the field itself before Val could reply.

The GAV door opened behind him, the Sound Suppressor or whatever his dad had called it being retrieved from inside. Danny did wonder how the thing worked. Some ghosts were able to seal people’s lips with ectoplasm, so maybe his parents had figured out how to replicate that effect. How many ghost abilities could be replicated with technology? Ectoblasts and ectoshields, of course; invisibility and intangibility to a degree; flight if you weren’t particular about its being caused by weightlessness —

“Ready?” Val called out to him.

“Yup,” Danny answered back. No one told him to move or turn, so he must already be facing in the right direction to minimize damage from his wail.

“Alright. Remember, release it twenty seconds after it’s on, if he doesn’t manage to overcome it before then, or sooner if he claps. I’ll time it.”

“Yes,” both of his parents agreed.

“Go for it, ghost boy!” Val called.

Right. Danny closed his eyes and breathed deep. The birdsong and the buzzing of insects petered off, the animals sensing the change in the atmosphere’s charge. Danny gave them a few seconds to hunker down or get out of the way.

Then he wailed.

All other noise faded. The wind of the shockwave’s backlash brushed back Danny’s hair, and probably Val’s and his parents’ as well. That wind was nothing compared to the torrent in front of him. Beneath the roar of the wail itself, he could hear the sound of grasses bending and snapping. Beneath that came the sound of a mechanical release.

Show’s on, then. Danny squashed the temptation to lower the force of his wail. They needed to know if whatever his parents had come up with was actually able to break through a full-force ghostly wail. At least they wouldn’t have to wait long now to find out. One second, two —

Something latched onto Danny’s face. Danny braced himself and kept wailing, waiting to see whether the contraption could force his mouth closed.

The contraption did not force his mouth closed. It forced his mouth open. A mass of what felt like ectoplasm so condensed and de-energized as to have become solid pushed its way past his teeth and —

A mask with buckles and a beak-like protrusion pointing inward, a sleek black tube waiting to probe down, down —

Danny shot into the air, kicking his feet uselessly and wailing as hard as he could. Trying to wail as hard as he could. He had to get away, he had to get the muzzle off, but it wouldn’t budge, unmoved by wailing, by phasing, by stretching his face into a different shape. He gave up the wailing and tried to duplicate. No duplicate formed. Duplication never worked when he was panicking.

The joints of the muzzle began to freeze under his grip. There was some sort of yelling going on beneath him. He flew higher to get away from the yelling people. His ice built up until he was sure that he couldn’t make the muzzle joints any colder. All he could hope for now was that he’d weakened them to the point where a good ectoblast would break them where his bare hands couldn’t, and that he’d gotten far enough away that, even if he blasted off the side of his face in the process of attacking the muzzle, the shouting people wouldn’t find him again before he healed. He let go with one hand to power up an ectoblast.

The muzzle clicked and withdrew the condensed ectoplasm thing from his mouth. Its joints went slack.

Danny dissipated his ice, tore the contraption off his face, and hurled it away from him.

A clear and not-quite-shouting voice asked, “What the hell, Danny?”

Danny yelped at how close the speaker sounded — wait, that was Val’s voice. Val?

Oh.

Danny heaved a deep, slightly shaky breath. Oh, this had been stupid. Very stupid. He reached to untie the blindfold so that he could see Valerie.

“What was that?” Val demanded.

“… Lost it for a second,” Danny admitted, his fingers fumbling on the ties. “Sorry.”

“Why didn’t you come down when we told you you were getting out of range? You can normally hear at that distance.”

Danny finally got the blindfold off and squinted into the bright sunlight. With the reflections off of Valerie’s helmet, he couldn’t tell whether she was angry. She might be. He winced.

“I … wasn’t really processing the words,” he said.

“And you didn’t clap out because …?”

Danny just rubbed his face and didn’t answer. Was he shaking? That needed to stop. He was fine. No part of him hurt; he was free and floating in the open sky; he could even still taste the ice cream that he’d eaten earlier.

“Okay, no idiotic comment about wanting to make sure the thing really works and no snark about me using your dumb pun, you aren’t okay. Get back to ground so we can check you over.”

Actually, Danny would much prefer stay up here, stare at clouds, and not think about anything for a while. He drifted back a little.

Val sighed and nudged her hoverboard closer. She reached out a hand expectantly, and Danny remembered that he was still holding the blindfold. He handed it back. Val grabbed his wrist along with the blindfold and began towing him downward like a weird Phantom-shaped balloon.

Danny tugged in the opposite direction, but Val’s grip tightened, and he really wasn’t feeling up for a fight. He gave up. The two drifted towards the field below. Huh, he hadn’t realized that he’d gotten so high; no wonder Val had needed to take off after him with the Suppressor’s controls.

Jack came into view first, large and orange and waving emphatically. Maddie, in contrast, stood still, one hand shielding her eyes from the sun as she peered upward. She was the first to find her voice once Danny and Valerie were back in sight, though, while her husband was still giving them an anxious visual assessment.

“Phantom! I’m so sorry; we thought the Sonic Suppressor was safe — what happened? Where are you hurt?”

Danny winced. Yeah, he really shouldn’t have just taken off like that. His parents had been trying so hard to be better, and this wasn’t even their fault, but they were going to feel horrible about it if he couldn’t convince them that he was genuinely fine.

“Nothing hurts,” Danny told them earnestly. He was close enough to the ground now that Val gave him a meaningful tug, and he let gravity take hold of him. “I’m alright; I just panicked. I’m sorry for scaring you.”

“That isn’t what you panicking normally looks like,” Val ratted him out.

“Va— Red!” Danny spun towards her, fists clenched in frustration, and promptly stumbled.

Val gave a sharp snort. “Sit down before you fall down, ghost boy. And you, give me your spectral analyzer or whatever you call it,” she added to Danny’s mom.

“I’m not hurt, nothing’s wrong,” Danny tried, but he sat down anyway, since Val looked half-ready to tackle him down if he didn’t comply, and he still didn’t feel up for a fight — oh, he could’ve just turned intangible. Duh.

Maddie and Val looked over the spectral energy readout together. “It’s high …” murmured Maddie.

Danny clutched the grass beside him. “It’s just, like, what an elevated heart rate would mean,” he argued. “I’m not going into shock or anything, okay? It was a bad memory. That’s all.”

His dad looked nauseous. “The Sonic Suppressor messed with your memories? We purified all the ectoplasm; it’s not supposed to do that —”

“No, it didn’t have anything to do with the Suppressor itself, it just reminded me of something the Guys in White tried and I kinda stopped thinking. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Danny’s fingers clenched tighter in the grass. Wasn’t communing with nature supposed to help with getting a grip? Sam always claimed it did. Not counting possession by Undergrowth, of course.

“I thought you said they didn’t know about your wail,” Val said tersely.

Danny blinked at her, confused about the direction she was taking the conversation. “They didn’t,” he confirmed. “At least, I don’t think so. They seemed pretty surprised when I did it.” In the corner of his vision, he saw his mom raise a hand over her mouth.

Valerie’s expression darkened further. “They didn’t know about your wail and they still tried to muzzle you?!” Indignation dripped from her voice, which was a little ironic, considering some of the things she’d done to him.

Or not … Danny thought, studying the thunderous expression behind her faceplate. For all that Val had once meant to literally destroy him, she’d always shown a certain level of respect for her favorite target, an understanding that he was intelligent and capable of things like negotiation and teamwork. There was every possibility that even before she’d figured out who he was, she would still have bristled at his being treated more like a rabid animal than a person.

“Well, they didn’t succeed,” was all that Danny could think to say. He suppressed another shiver. “Guess they won’t wait till I’m conscious next time, though.” He forced a laugh, but no one else laughed with him. Tough crowd today.

His mom abruptly knelt down in front of him, his dad right behind her. Danny blinked and let go of the grass. His mom caught both of his hands, brought them in front of him, and held them gently, white gloves against black.

“Phantom,” she said, her voice soft but serious. “There isn’t going to be a ‘next time.’ They aren’t going to have you.”

“Uh,” Danny replied, at a loss. His mom’s words felt surprisingly reassuring, and he certainly had no plans to leave Amity again, but he wasn’t known for his prowess at avoiding disastrous mistakes, and an entire federal agency waiting for his slightest slip-up would eventually find something to pounce on.

His mom wasn’t finished, apparently. “If they’re wise, they won’t try. But if they do, if they get anywhere close to you, Jack and I are coming straight after them and showing them just what the Fenton Bazooka can do on its laser setting.”

What?

“That’s right!” his dad backed this up, as enthusiastic as if he was talking about going toe-to-toe with a ghost, not with his childhood heroes. Danny stared dumbly at him, but he merely grinned. “No ghost hunter messes with an ally of the Fentons and gets away with it!”

“I,” Danny started, but he didn’t continue, because seriously, what?

Maddie smiled gently. “You do know what ‘allies’ means, don’t you, Phantom?”

“I didn’t think it involved firing bazookas at government agents!”

“Of course it does,” his mom said simply. “It means that any attack on you is an attack on us. If anyone tries to take you away, we’re coming right after you and bringing you back to Amity Park where you belong.”

Danny’s fingers tightened around hers. He didn’t mean for them to tighten and barely even registered her own hands returning the squeeze, but. Belong. “I’m a ghost; I don’t …” he managed to get out. They didn’t know, they weren’t looking at him like they knew, so why in the world would they think he was anything other than an unusually helpful trespasser in this world?

Appearing to catch on, his dad boomed, “You’re a ghost hunter of Amity Park! And, you know, even if we get the ghost problem under control, there’s always the university and the observatory here, for physics research and stuff! You don’t have to stay here forever or anything, but the town would miss you if you went away.” He hesitated then, wetting his lips and meeting Danny’s glowing eyes for longer than was probably safe for his own retinas, and finally added, “We, uh, Maddie and I would, too. You’re a good kid, y’know?”

Maddie squeezed Danny’s hands again and nodded in agreement.

Why did his face feel — oh, no, he was crying again. Why did he always get so weepy in the aftermath of being scared?

“Phantom?” his mom asked, her voice full of concern. “Are you alright?”

Danny nodded. Both of his parents leaned closer, and he nodded again and then just kind of threw himself at them without thinking about it. Their arms opened wide to catch him.

“‘M,” Danny mumbled. “‘M alright, just haven’t … felt safe like this in … a while, so …” He didn’t finish, but he didn’t seem to need to; his dad’s hug tightened and his mom guided his head to rest on her shoulder. He cried. He wasn’t even sure why, except that it felt good, and he felt protected in a way he hadn’t since he was a kid who believed that his parents would always be there to rescue him when he got in over his head. Of course Danny understood now that his parents were far from all-powerful. There was just something about their stated determination to come to his rescue no matter what, not just out of a sense of duty but because they wanted him here, without even knowing who he was, that made Danny believe they genuinely could keep him safe from anything.

Yeah, it was a childish belief, but Danny could still see Youngblood even in human form, so maybe it was alright for him to still have a few childish beliefs, here and there.

Some minutes passed like that, none of them moving away. Danny wasn’t sure how many. Eventually, the sound of a door on the GAV opening and closing drew their attention.

“Just putting your Suppressor thing and its controls back in your assault vehicle,” Valerie said.

Danny had actually forgotten she was still there. He hadn’t heard her in a while; she must have gone off to find where the Sonic Suppressor had fallen while he and his parents had been, well, hugging it out.

It wasn’t that embarrassing, really. It was a very Fenton way of doing things.

“We are definitely not doing any more tests today,” Val continued, “so I’m gonna go get other things done. You guys should … talk. I’ll see you.”

Danny stiffened at the implied suggestion. Oh man, no, Val, I am absolutely not telling them right now, what the hell kind of timing is “aftermath of some crazy panic episode?” he thought. And surely it would be better to tell them as Danny than as Phantom.

His mom felt him tense and ran her fingers soothingly through his hair. Her gloves were ectophobic enough that they glided easily through his hair without catching in the strands. She was still messing up his hairstyle, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

As Val flew off, his mom murmured, “We don’t have to talk right now if you don’t want, moonbeam.”

Danny nodded gratefully. Aside from just the poor timing, he still needed to figure out how to tell his parents in a way that would make them understand what his being a half-ghost meant. Maybe he should ask Jazz for help. Not that Jazz had had notably more success in getting their parents to understand things than he had, but she would undoubtedly draft him a twelve-page script for revealing his ghost half, which would at least make a good starting point for figuring out what to say.

Later. That was a problem for later. Right now, it was enough to kneel in the wail-swept grass with his arms around his parents and let them hold him in turn.

Danny had stopped crying some time ago, but none of them seemed eager to let go. Eventually, though, his mom’s hand stilled against his head, and Danny realized that she was shaking as if chilled. Because my ghost form aura is freezing, right, he remembered sheepishly.

Danny let go of both of his parents. “Sorry; I forgot that I’m … I hope you aren’t too cold?”

“Not at all!” his dad assured him. Jack looked at his wife and evidently saw that the same was not true for her. Without another word, he lifted Danny away into his own lap. “Here, I’m better insulated!”

Danny froze, then forced himself to relax. Breathing out a nervous laugh, he joked, “No containment cells this time, right?”

His dad stiffened.

Danny winced. I shouldn’t have brought that up. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“No,” said Jack. “No, Phantom. I — I’m not very good at this apologizing thing, but … I’m sorry, kiddo. For everything.” He swallowed. “You didn’t do anything wrong —”

“I’ve definitely done some things wrong,” Danny interrupted, feeling weirdly embarrassed by the apology.

“Right, I mean, but not, not anything where you should’ve been hurt for it or locked up or anything else that we did, or said we were gonna do, or told other people to do, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Danny squeezed his eyes shut and turned his face in towards his dad’s chest. He was not about to start crying again, damn it.

He felt his mom take one of his hands. “We’re both sorry,” she said, softly. “You deserve to feel safe here, and if there’s anything at all Jack and I can do to make that happen or to help with the … the nightmares we’ve given you —”

Danny shook his head hard. “You didn’t,” he told them, regretting clueing them in to the fact that he was sleeping poorly if that had made them think they were the main ones responsible. “Not the bad ones. Most of the stuff you guys make doesn’t instantly destroy ghosts, plus I maybe-sort-of-sabotaged-your-worst-stuff-sorry, but, um, I always figured I’d have time if you did catch me, and it’d be okay.” A while ago, after Sam’s anti-dissection “save the frogs” campaign, Danny had asked his mom what exactly she planned to do if she did catch Phantom. He’d come away reassured that even in the worst case, his parents would spend days or even weeks on less-invasive initial testing. Plenty of time for Danny to prove his identity to them, if he needed to.

In a tone of utter depression, Jack said, “Time to be rescued from us.”

“Or to get away on my own, or to cut a deal again, or just to, like, talk to you, see if you would stop,” Danny insisted.

“We’ll stop,” said his mom, her voice quiet and breathy and horrified.

What? Danny turned his head and blinked at her in confusion.

Maddie swallowed and went on, “We’ll dismantle the lab —”

“What?! No, I meant stop picking me apart, not stop doing ghost science altogether!” Danny sat up straight. The last thing he had ever expected to have to do was talk his parents out of giving up ectoscience. He continued all in a rush, “Your inventions are good, a lot of the time. I’d never have won the worst fights I’ve been in without them, and if it hadn’t been for the ecto-dejecto, I would’ve lost Danielle, and I wouldn’t have any idea how to take care of my own health either, let alone how to keep my allies safe in ghost fights, and, and, just … don’t stop. Please. I don’t want you to stop. I just want you to listen.”

Maddie squeezed his hand. “Alright,” she told him. “We’re listening.”

“Cool.” Danny slumped, falling against his dad’s chest. His dad wrapped his big arms loosely around him.

His mom chuckled.

“Mm?” Danny asked.

“Oh, I thought you were making a pun,” she explained. “‘Cool.’”

Danny looked at where she was holding his hand despite the chill of his aura. “Oh. Right. If you guys are getting cold again —”

“Nope,” Jack insisted, arms tightening a little, though not enough to make it hard for Danny to get out of them without phasing. His dad was feeling clingy today, apparently.

“You’re quite warm underneath your aura,” his mom commented. Under her breath, she added, “however that works.”

Danny smiled at her and shrugged. “The laws of thermodynamics are just more pesky physics rules that ghosts don’t have to follow, like momentum conservation and time being linear. The aura trick’s pretty mild, really. I can make ice that never melts.”

“You can what?” his mom all but squawked.

Danny let go of her hand and focused on making a piece of nevermelt. It took more concentration than normal ice, since he had to manipulate entropy on top of just the ice, and that was tricky, but he had practice with entropy manipulation from constantly expelling his core’s coldness into his ghostly aura without letting it affect the rest of his body. A finger-length ice crystal grew in his hand. He closed his fist around it, less to finish it off and more to check that he’d done it right and the ice didn’t feel cold.

“Here,” said Danny, offering his mom the crystal.

His mom took it and blinked at it, while his dad leaned over Danny’s shoulder to see it more closely.

“It looks like ice, without a water surface layer,” his dad concluded. “It really is ice?”

“Yep,” Danny told him. “You can take it home and test it if you want.”

“Alright!” Jack beamed.

Danny smiled back. He felt his shoulders relax. He hadn’t driven the ectoscientist out of his parents after all.

“I’ve never heard of anything like this before,” his mom commented distractedly, still turning the ice crystal in her fingers.

Danny shrugged. “It’s not that rare in communities of ice core ghosts, but it tends to have cultural significance, so it doesn’t get traded out much.”

His mom’s eyes snapped to him. “And you’re alright with our having a piece you made?”

“Yeah?”

Maddie smiled at him, looking as touched as she had when he and Jazz had given her a mock science paper they’d written about her best qualities as a parent for Mother’s Day.

Danny smiled back. The smile quickly turned into a yawn, his exhaustion from both the ghostly wail and crying for he-wasn’t-even-sure-how-long finally hitting him.

“Tired?” his mom asked fondly.

Danny shrugged. “I’ll nap when I get back to the Ghost Zone.”

His dad shuffled him so that they could look at each other and asked, “Need a ride to the portal? We can, uh, turn off the GAV’s weapons systems. You can hold the key to ‘em, if you want?”

His dad looked so eager to help. And, really, it would save Danny energy to not have to fly home. “Okay,” Danny agreed.

His dad moved to get to his feet, and Danny floated up until he was standing himself. His dad kept a reassuring hand on Danny’s shoulder while his mom took care of the GAV’s anti-ghost defenses and weaponry. Whether the shoulder-hold reassurance was for Danny or for Jack, Danny wasn’t sure.

Danny caught the weapons systems key when his mom tossed it to him and climbed into his usual seat in the GAV. His mom asked if he was comfortable, and he nodded with his eyes barely open.

The inside of the GAV was warm from the sunlight that had filtered in while it had been parked. Danny felt the GAV start up and rumble over the dirt track beside the old field. The buzzing and chirps from the wildlife outside dimmed beneath the familiar hum of the engine. He relaxed into his seat, silently feeling out his ghost form and making sure he wasn’t about to drop it even if he stopped focusing for a while.

He was asleep before they reached the main road.

… … …

“Hey, Phantom.” His dad’s voice.

“Mmmuh?” Danny responded, cracking his eyes open.

His dad leaned over him. He heard the sound of his seatbelt unbuckling. “Let’s get you down to the portal, huh?”

Fentonworks loomed outside the GAV’s front window. The driver and shotgun seats were both empty. Right. “Mmkay,” Danny agreed, pushing against his own seat to get himself up. His intangibility-edged hands sank just slightly into the cushion.

He didn’t make it halfway to his feet before his dad swept him into a bridal carry like he was six years old again and had nodded off on the ride home from school.

“What?” Danny yawped, blinking himself the rest of the way awake.

“I’ve gotcha, kiddo,” was all his dad said.

“I can walk. And fly,” Danny protested, but his dad just held him tighter. Danny glanced anxiously at the windows of his house. If Jazz looked outside, she was going to think he was too injured to move or something — except Jazz should still be out patrolling with Dani. It was good timing that Dani’s visit had coincided with his parents wanting to test out their ghostly wail countermeasure, because Val was probably busy analyzing how that test had gone and Danny really didn’t feel up to dealing with any ghost nonsense himself right now.

Danny’s mom unlocked the door to the house in front of them.

“Seriously,” Danny added to his dad, but his dad neither stopped walking nor loosened his grip, so Danny sighed and resigned himself to being toted around like an invalid.

They stepped inside. His mom closed the door. “Are you feeling alright, Phantom?”

“Yes, I’m fine, I just needed a nap because wailing wears me out. You can put me down whenever,” he finished, trying to catch his dad’s eye.

“Okay,” his dad agreed, without putting him down.

“Jack,” Maddie gently admonished. Finally, finally, his dad stopped and let Danny float out of his grip.

“Thank you.” Danny settled on his feet. He looked around, still not used to being in his house in ghost form when his parents were right next to him, and rubbed his neck. “Well, um, thanks for the lift. See you Monday for more ethics guidelines revisions?”

“Is there anything you need before then?” his mom asked.

Danny shook his head.

His dad asked, “Are you gonna be okay in there?”

“Yeah, of course,” Danny told him. “You’ve seen the Zone; it’s not dangerous if you know what you’re doing. And I’m just going to Dora’s, besides.” Partly to see if Dora had heard anything more about where Aragon or his amulet might be, partly to take advantage of the expansive commitment to hospitality that her life as a medieval noble had left her with.

“Call us if there’s anything you need, okay, moonbeam? And take care,” said his mom.

“You too.” Danny smiled teasingly at them. “I’d hate to have to find another pair of ecto-tech developers at your guys’s level.”

His dad brightened at the jibe. “You wouldn’t manage that if you searched the whole world and the Ghost Zone besides!”

“Ohhh, I don’t know, you haven’t seen what the ghost yetis of the Far Frozen have managed to engineer …” Danny ribbed him back.

Jack blinked, then immediately turned to his wife. “Maddie! We need to make an expedition to this Far Frozen place! I’ll get the winter jumpsuits!”

Danny laughed.

“Let’s wait for an afternoon when Phantom’s available to take us, dear,” Maddie said reasonably.

“It’d be a whole day trip,” Danny informed them. “Maybe in the summer? I’ll be freer then.”

His mom smiled at him. “We’ll look forward to it, then.”

“Cool.” He winked to let her know it was a pun this time. “Right, well … I should get going.”

“I’m gonna make candied pecan fudge for Monday! Bring an appetite!” his dad told him.

“I will!” Danny promised. He stifled another yawn as he lifted off his feet. He needed to go before his parents decided he was too tired to leave to his own devices and tried to tuck him into the guest bed or something. He was supposed to be home as Danny later tonight.

They all waved goodbye as Danny phased down to the basement.

The lab had become a mess of mechanical bits in the day or so since Danny had last seen it. Danny shook his head and zapped the pieces of machinery into neater piles with low-power ectoblasts as he made his way over to the portal, to save him some cleanup later.

He cast a final glance up towards the kitchen when he reached the portal door. “See you guys soon.”

Chapter Text

Jazz was the second one awake at Fentonworks on Sunday, after Jack. Jack wasn’t surprised. Maddie preferred to sleep in after insomnia had struck, and Danny was always hard to rouse in the morning.

“Morning, Dad!” Jazz chirped from the stairs connecting the hall by the kitchen to the bedrooms.

“Morning, Jazzypants!” Jack replied, trying hard to keep his volume low.

Jazz cocked her head curiously. “You aren’t in the lab,” she commented.

“I’m just excited for our family day!” Jack told her. Their last real family day had been weeks ago, and as valuable as the extra research time had been, he missed spending more time with his kids. They were both changing so quickly these days, Jazz preparing to set off on her own and Danny acting noticeably more open and assured by the week. These are the days you’ll treasure, some nostalgic mental voice promised Jack. He wanted to make every day like this as perfect as possible. That required planning: what food to make, what games and movies to suggest, how to broach the … conversation.

The necessary conversation wasn’t difficult to put into words, per se. Jack and Maddie just needed to determine whether or not their children would be comfortable with their offering the guest room in the Ops Center to Phantom as a waystation. They’d agreed to ask Danny and Jazz jointly, since Jazz was the best out of the three of them at reading Danny, and there was a chance that Danny, ever anxious about ghosts, would sense his parents’ eagerness and agree even if he wasn’t comfortable sleeping in such close proximity to a ghost. That would do no one any favors. Jack just needed to figure out how to make the question sound more idle than it was, so he was avoiding the lab and its tendency to push everything not related to ghost research out of his mind, until after he’d formulated the right words.

The only problem was, no matter how Jack tried internally phrasing the question, he couldn’t shake the memory of Phantom’s cold, not-quite-solid weight settled against his chest like it belonged there. He didn’t know how to keep it out of his voice, that nagging feeling that it wasn’t an accident of fate that had thrown Phantom and the Fentons into each other’s orbits. Jack knew logically that there was no guarantee that Phantom would use the guest room even if Jazz and Danny were comfortable with its being offered. Resting outside the Ghost Zone might not be restorative for the ghost, and even if it was, Fentonworks in particular might not be a place he could relax in yet. And if Phantom did accept the room, there was no guarantee he would ever come to see it as more than a waystation. By all indications, the ghost boy had a complicated relationship with the concept of family, the details of which Jack and Maddie still had yet to learn. They would need to learn them at some point and to see whether Phantom’s strained connection to his living family could be mended, rather than replaced. The former would doubtless be better for Phantom’s core, considering how much he seemed to care for his family whenever he spoke of them.

If only those logical caveats could influence Jack’s heart. How funny, that he’d spent so long dreaming of becoming a figure that struck fear into the metaphorical hearts of ghosts, only to discover that a ghost finding comfort in him meant so much more.

“You do remember that I’m going out for lunch, right? Though I’ll be back around two,” Jazz reminded him, searching the cabinets for the box of Special K.

“Right,” said Jack. “How, uh …” He glanced upward. Danny was probably still asleep, but he was home and therefore potentially in hearing range. “That’s been going well, then?” he finished.

Jazz smiled at him, a little dreamily. “Mm-hmm,” she confirmed. She shook her head and cast her own glance towards the ceiling. “Honestly, Danny might not wake up till I get back, anyway. You should let him sleep in. He hasn’t been sleeping well lately.”

Jack blinked. “He hasn’t?” Danny did seem tired a lot, especially lately, but Jack had thought it was from staying up to play the new version of Doomed that had come out recently. Somewhat recently. How long ago had that been, actually?

Come to think, Danny had been pretty good about going to bed on time the past few weeks. Should Jack be concerned?

“He’s just been thinking about a lot,” his daughter told him, interrupting his worries. Like his mother, thought Jack. Jazz gave him an understanding smile. “He’ll be alright. Though it wouldn’t hurt to remind him that you love him and you’re glad he’s your son and that will never change, and that he can tell you anything.”

“You got it, Jazzy!” said Jack, cementing the words in his mind. He wasn’t the best with words, and the ones Jazz had suggested sounded good. Even if all of it was stuff Danny already knew, Jack had learned that most people liked hearing things like that aloud. Good lord, what was he ever going to do without Jazz?

“Thanks, Dad.”

Speaking of telling his kids things aloud. “I’m gonna miss you so much, you know,” Jack said. “You’re a great kid. A great young woman, now! And I’m really glad I get to have you as a daughter.” (Alright, so it was more or less the same phrasing Jazz had just given him, but what was he supposed to do, come up with synonyms on the spot?)

“Aww, Dad.” Jazz stepped over to kiss his forehead before she sat down with her cereal and milk.

Jack beamed at her. “We’re gonna have to do a big family trip this summer before you go! Check out some of the old ghost towns we haven’t hit yet, see if they live up to their name!”

Jazz snorted softly. “If you want it to be a family bonding trip, do something besides ghost hunting,” she cautioned.

“Aww, but Danny said he wanted to go ghost hunting with us this summer!”

Jazz blinked. Her hand stilled, holding the milk gallon at a not-quite-pouring angle over her cereal bowl. “He did?”

Jack didn’t respond except to nod, not wanting their milk to end up all over the kitchen table.

“Hm.” Jazz returned her attention to preparing her cereal. “That … might be good. What was the context?”

“We were talking about how his life’s going, and how NASA doesn’t like ecto-stuff —”

Jazz interrupted him with a long-suffering sigh. “Dad. I know you’re oblivious, but didn’t you see anything wrong with that picture?”

Jack held back a wince. He appreciated his daughter’s bluntness, he really did! It was just … harsh to hear, sometimes.

Jazz didn’t wait for him to respond. “Danny’s self-perception is at a very critical stage,” she told him, gesturing with one hand while she stirred cereal with the other. “You can’t let him latch onto what you want him to be instead of what he wants!”

“He’s the one who brought it up, Jazz.”

“But in the context of thinking he can’t work at NASA? You haven’t exactly been subtle about wanting him to take up ghost hunting instead.”

Jack scratched his neck. “I told him we could try and take care of his ectocontamination so he could go for NASA, but he said he didn’t want to —”

“And you’d better respect that boundary,” Jazz said with sudden ferocity, jabbing her spoon towards him.

Jack found himself holding his hands up without thinking about it. “I didn’t push it!” he defended himself.

Jazz narrowed her eyes for a moment, then lowered the spoon. “Huh,” she commented. “Even though it was an opportunity for ectoscience? You and mom get really overenthusiastic about your research.”

“We’re trying to be better about that.” They didn’t want to make Phantom afraid again, nor to push him away —

Except he and Jazz were talking about Danny right now, not Phantom. Jack shook his head. It wasn’t the first time recently that his mind had conflated the two boys.

“That’s good,” said Jazz, at ease again. She chewed a spoonful of her cereal and swallowed. “And I didn’t mean to imply it would be bad if Danny follows in your footsteps, just that if he decides on that right now, it’s going to feel like he gave up on his dreams. He’s loved space since … I mean, since forever; you guys played that They Might Be Giants space album so much when he was little that I’m still sick of it, because it was the only thing he’d fall asleep to. NASA isn’t the only path to a space career. Axion Labs is already using ectoplasmic power sources in their satellites, and he’s enough of an engineer that he could probably work at any of the companies that make parts for space shuttles.”

“Huh,” said Jack, taking that in. “You think one of those places will start sending their own astronauts up?”

Jazz shrugged. “It could happen. But very few people ever actually go into space, and thousands more get to work to make it happen. Danny jumping straight to ghost hunting instead is …” She trailed off and sighed. “He tries so hard to make you guys proud, you know,” she finished, softly. “A lot harder than you’ve realized.”

They didn’t talk much more after that, Jazz working her way through her breakfast while Jack’s mind occupied itself with the new tangle of what he should say to Danny about possible future careers. He didn’t want to push Danny away from the family business if Danny was interested, which Jack thought he really might be. Danny might have always loved space, but he’d also loved working with his parents in the lab all throughout middle school. It was only when he’d started high school that he’d pulled back, and even then, Jack had spotted him tinkering on gadgets in the lab more than once over the past two years when he thought he was alone. He deserved a chance to explore both paths.

… Hmm.

Fentonworks had been focused on making defenses against ghosts from almost the moment they’d finished the portal itself and had seen it finally working, but if everything with Phantom meant that it was time to change — or at least expand — the scope of their projects …

Jazz barely looked up when Jack left to relocate to the lab. By the time Jazz left for her lunch date, Jack was so deep into research on small satellite licensing requirements that he almost missed her goodbye.

Axion Labs had been allowed to send full-sized ecto-powered satellites into space. Ergo, the Fentons should be able to get their own license for a much smaller version. The specification requirements for the simplest form of private satellite to license didn’t even look that hard to meet, and if they did run into any problems there, well, Vlad had bought Axion last year and could surely arrange for Danny to chat with some of its engineers, couldn’t he?

“Are you trying to patent something new?” Danny asked from the top of the stairs while Jack was printing out a bunch of satellite schematics.

“Morning, Danno!” Jack called up to him. “Did you get breakfast yet?”

“Not quite yet.” Danny started walking down towards Jack. He was wearing a t-shirt with no jacket despite its being a colder day and hence chilly in the basement lab, but he didn’t seem to mind. He frowned at the printed schematics when he got close enough to see the details. “Are those satellites?”

“You bet!” said Jack. Danny raised his eyebrows at him. “It’s, ah, not a patent app. I was just thinking, if you want to get back into ectoengineering, an ecto-powered satellite could be a good project for ya!”

“You know that the FCC has a whole process for licensing satellites to make sure they don’t all collide with each other, right? You can’t just throw stuff into orbit for fun,” said Danny, in the regretful tone of someone who’d definitely looked into it.

Jack grinned and rifled through the stack of printed papers until he found the satellite licensing requirements at the bottom. He pulled them out with a flourish.

Danny just blinked. “It’s not cheap.”

“Well, sure! But we can afford it!” Jack insisted.

Danny took the papers and looked between them and Jack a few times. “Why a satellite?”

“Well, imagine how it would look on a space program application if you ever change your mind! ‘I built a satellite as a teenager.’ Not everyone would be able to say that, eh?”

Danny sighed. “Dad, it’s fine. I’m alright with just working here; you don’t need to —”

“Danny,” Jack interrupted him, rubbing the back of his neck. Danny quieted. “Fentonworks is yours if you want it, but your mom and I didn’t have kids because we wanted more Jacks and Maddies, y’know? I wanna see what you do when you really go for it.” He tapped the papers.

Danny raised his eyebrows again, but his expression wasn’t all the way sarcastic this time; it looked more … teetering on the verge of interest, of hope.

“And, hey, Axion Labs could use some ecto-powered satellite competition, huh?” Jack joked.

That seemed to do it. Danny gave him a sudden, sharp smile. “You know what?” he said, “I think they could.”

“That’s my boy.” Jack reached out to ruffle his son’s hair. For once, Danny didn’t bat his hand away.

Danny set the papers down a moment later, and Jack reminded him to go get breakfast.

“Just a sec,” said Danny. He reached into one of his pockets and pulled out a loop of cord with — oh, that was the GAV weapons systems key. Jack blinked at it. Had he and Maddie forgotten to collect it from Phantom yesterday? “I, uh, found it near the portal when I was cleaning up the lab.”

Apparently they had forgotten. “Oh. Thanks, kiddo!”

“Did Mom go out?” Danny asked, casting another glance around the lab, which held only the two of them.

“She’s in bed,” Jack told him.

Danny’s eyebrows furrowed in worry. “Still? Is she okay? She didn’t — catch a cold yesterday or anything, did she?” He bit his lip.

“We just didn’t fall asleep for a while. Sometimes you get thinking at night, you know?” Jack reassured him. Maddie had been up for even longer than he had, although Jack didn’t know by how much. They’d both been awake till the early morning, going over the long-avoided question that Maddie had finally given voice to: What would we have done, if we’d ever caught him securely back in the early days?

It wasn’t a fun question. Ultimately, Jack wasn’t sure it was a useful one, either. They didn’t need to start borrowing guilt from scenarios that had never come to pass, especially when there were so many things they had done wrong with Phantom. Some kind fate or god or time-controlling ghost had smiled on them enough to stop them before they’d reached a point where they could never have made up for the damage they’d done, and that was enough for Jack. They could still fix things. And they were going to.

That wasn’t enough for Maddie, though. Neither, it seemed, was Phantom’s own stated conviction that even had all else failed, he could have talked them out of going too far. Jack had brought this up sometime around midnight, and Maddie had merely replied, “What if we didn’t listen?”

Jack hadn’t had any counterargument except that, in the end, they had listened, even if the circumstances and the timing had been different. He didn’t think that was only because of the circumstances and timing. He just … didn’t have any way of proving that.

“Yeah, I know,” Danny said with a tired nod.

Jack shook his head to himself. “Go eat,” he reminded his skinny son.

“Okay, okay.” Danny turned for the stairs.

Jack watched him go, wondering again whether he should worry about what thoughts were keeping his son up at night. Jazz had told him not to worry, but she’d also told him to say —

“Danny?” Jack called.

His son paused with one foot on the third stair and the other still on the basement floor, tensed to jump. He looked back. “Yeah?”

“I’m really glad you’re my son. Nothing’s ever going to change that, you know,” Jack told him, smiling.

Danny returned the smile, but his smile was more confused, even concerned. Jack must not be saying that as often as he should, if it seemed that out of left field.

Better late than never, though. He barreled on. “If there’s anything you want to talk about … I mean, you can talk to me about anything.”

Now Danny froze outright. “You know?”

Jack blinked. “Know what?”

They stared at each other for a few seconds. The printer made a winding-down noise.

“Was that just, like, an idle comment?” Danny asked at last.

Jack frowned. “You said you weren’t sleeping well ‘cause you were thinking about something?” Or at least he’d implied it.

“Oh.” Danny’s shoulders dropped. Jack frowned harder. His son looked at least as disappointed as he did relieved.

“Is there something you need to talk to me about?” asked Jack.

Danny gripped his arm uncomfortably, drew a deep breath, and cast a glance around the lab before meeting Jack’s eyes again. Quietly, he asked, “Can it wait?”

Part of Jack considered saying “no.” He wouldn’t normally have given that idea much thought: he and Maddie both remembered their own teenage years well enough to know that demanding information from their kids was more likely to get them a lie, and they would rather wait and be given the truth. But right now, there was so much sincerity on Danny’s face that Jack got the distinct impression he would get the truth if he pushed.

Did he push? Should he? There had been a time when Danny had told them, or at least Maddie, just about everything. Jack missed those days. Sometimes, it seemed as if Danny missed those days, too. None of them had yet figured out how to get back to the way things used to be, at least not for more than a week or so. Would pushing for the truth now do it?

Would it be worth it, if it was?

Frustrated, Jack asked, “Do you want it to wait?”

“Kinda,” Danny said. He took his foot off of the stair. “It’s just that I don’t, I mean, I haven’t …” He let go of his arm as he trailed off, then stood up straighter. “Yeah. I’d rather it wait.”

Jack nodded. “Okay.”

“Thanks, Dad.” Danny smiled and turned for the stairs again.

Jack hoped that had been the right call. He’d never mastered the balance between giving his kids space and giving them support, much as he’d tried. How long should he leave his son to his own devices about whatever this was? “Danny?” he called again.

Danny looked back over his shoulder, one hand on the railing. “Yeah?”

Jack swallowed. “Don’t wait too long, alright?”

Danny winced and looked away, but he nodded. “Alright.”

“Thanks, kiddo.”

He disappeared up the stairs.

Jack turned off the printer and got back to the project he’d begun last night before the concert. Initially, he’d wanted to work on revising the Sonic Suppressor design into something less … distressing, but he hadn’t yet been able to come up with a viable alternative to absorbing Phantom’s sonic energy at the source, so a new project it was. Maybe after a week or two of working on something else, he’d have better ideas about the Suppressor.

He pulled out his old notes on the Ecto Converter and on the Fenton Die-ode that they’d made their portal door out of, then got to work.

Jack was maybe twenty minutes into the project when Danny came back downstairs. Jack looked up in surprise. Danny tended to avoid anyone he’d had an uncomfortable conversation with for a few hours afterward, so Jack must have done better than he’d thought earlier.

“Working on the satellite already?” Danny asked, smiling teasingly.

Jack shook his head. “You’re the lead on that project, Danno!”

Danny approached Jack’s lab bench with a curious expression. “What are you working on, then?”

“I call it the Spectral-Stealer Shield! Or I will once I get it built!” Jack told him, beaming under the attention.

Danny cocked his head. “A new type of ghost shield?” He looked at the notes and sketches Jack had made so far.

“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong, Danny!” said Jack. “This’ll be a shield for ghosts, for if they’re, ah, around anything like … like our old Ecto Converter! Make sure you can’t pull energy from ‘em. Just a safety measure.” Less for an actual Ecto Converter, admittedly, for which it would be easier to install a filter that only let dilute ambient spectral energy through, and more for countering the GIW’s power-draining collar trick, just in case. “The finicky bit is, it’s gotta let through spectral energy that gets pushed out, so it doesn’t mess with ghost powers or spectroregulation, but not any that gets pulled out —”

A sudden pressure around his bicep stopped him. He looked down to see his son hugging his arm fiercely.

Danny leaned his forehead against Jack’s shoulder. “I love you, Dad,” he said, his voice quiet but brimming with emotion.

Jack’s whole chest warmed. He had no idea what had spurred this reaction, but he clearly needed to figure that out and keep doing it. He reached around with his free hand and rested it on his son’s back. “I love you too, Danno.”

Should he ask what had spurred —?

“Awww,” came a soft voice from the top of the stairs, distracting them both.

Danny let go. “Mom! You’re up! Are you feeling alright?”

Maddie smiled down at him. “I’m just fine, sweetie.”

The words reassured Jack, too. He studied his wife’s face as she came down the stairs. There were still dark circles beneath her eyes, but she looked far more relaxed than she had the evening before. Whatever grim conclusions she’d come to in the early morning hours, she must have made her peace with them. Jack gave a sigh of relief.

“Are you two working on a project together?” Maddie asked encouragingly.

“Actually, Dad gave me my own project,” Danny told her. He seemed to be aiming for nonchalance, but the excitement was still clear in his voice when he said, “I’m gonna make a small satellite.”

“An ecto-powered satellite, like they make at Axion Labs!” Jack put in.

“Ooh, good idea,” she told Jack with a proud smile that made him want to melt.

Danny asked them both, “Do you have your ecto-battery schematics around here somewhere? The satellite’s power supply is gonna have to be the center of the design process.”

They probably had the physical schematics somewhere, but they definitely had an electronic copy of the patent, and that would be easier to locate. “Sure thing!” Jack told him, moving to the computer.

“Do you know what sensors you’re going to put on your satellite?” Maddie asked Danny in the meantime.

“I don’t know how many I’ll be able to fit yet,” Danny replied. “Definitely a camera or two, maybe a bunch of them for different spectrums? I wonder how much telescopic power I can pack in …?” And just like that, he was clearing space on a workbench to start sketching ideas.

Yeah. Jack would say a bit of pride over coming up with this project for Danny was warranted.

“Oh, Jazz is home!” Danny said suddenly while Jack was still searching through his patents folder (he really needed a better file naming system). A moment later, Jack heard the front door open. Danny set his pen down and ran upstairs to greet his sister.

Maddie stepped over and kissed Jack’s temple once they were alone. “Well played, dear.”

Jack nuzzled her cheek with a grin. “We just needed something that combined his interests, all along!” Although, it had actually been the Spectral-Stealer Shield rather than the satellite that Danny had responded the most enthusiastically to …

“He might be able to get a job at Axion on the merit of the satellite alone,” Maddie continued. “Right out of high school even, if … if he wants.”

Jack refocused his attention on his wife’s words. “Aw, Mads, I don’t think our boy’s given up on college yet.”

“He hasn’t said anything about where he might apply, and he keeps trying to cut down the number of high school classes he’ll take,” Maddie countered.

“He’s still a sophomore, Maddie. Maybe college just feels too far away to him right now.” That hadn’t been the case for Jazz at the same age, but Jazz, with her years-out calendars that already had the dates marked for when she should complete the licensing requirements for each of the careers she was considering, might not be the best comparison. Jack continued, “The satellite would look good on college applications too, I bet!”

“That’s true.” Maddie sighed, but she smiled again afterward. “It’s good to see his enthusiasm again, in any case. I’ve missed it.”

“I think our family’s gonna have a great summer, Mads.” Jack returned her smile. “Speaking of! Should we go get our family day started?”

Maddie yanked her husband up out of his chair, leaving him as pleasantly flustered as her shows of strength always did. Her eyes shone bright. “Let’s.”

… … …

Jasmine, it seemed, was on a dogged crusade to rekindle her brother’s space ambitions. The family spent the afternoon rewatching For All Mankind at Jazz’s insistence, while a selection of candies that she’d picked up on her way home from lunch cooled down in their freezer in order to be vacuum-pumped later for a freeze-dried dessert. Danny may have been rolling his eyes throughout it all, but it was also working. The satellite project had started him sharing his space-travel-related knowledge aloud again; Jazz’s efforts made sure he didn’t stop.

Jack almost felt bad about needing to change the topic to The Conversation when they finally sat down to dinner. He hoped it wouldn’t send Danny into one of his more sullen moods. Danny had been more engaged and open the past couple of weeks, especially this last week, but Jack had never had a good handle on when an unwelcome comment or question would make Danny close himself off again.

Maddie finished cutting up her portion of the (perhaps slightly green, but not reanimated this time!) pot roast and put her utensils down without yet taking a bite. “Danny, Jazz,” she began, pleasantly but anxiously. The kids looked up from their own plates. “There’s something that your father and I wanted to ask you.” She drew a deep breath while Danny and Jazz exchanged an apprehensive glance. “You know that we’ve been working with Phantom for a little while now —”

“Two and a half weeks,” Jazz specified with a nod.

Danny frowned. “It’s been three.”

“It’s been three if you’re counting from when alliance negotiations began, but two and a half of you’re counting from when the agreement was ratified —”

“‘Ratified,’ really, Jazz? What, is there some kind of pretentious-snob ghost hunter council now?” Danny interrupted.

Jazz rolled her eyes.

Jack and Maddie blinked at each other. Neither of them were used to the kids discussing anything ghost-related so casually, let alone with clear knowledge. “I, ah, didn’t realize you were paying that much attention,” said Jack.

“To how things are going between you and the dedicated and hardworking, if somewhat immature, town hero? Of course we are,” said Jazz.

Danny narrowed his eyes at his sister.

“Alright,” Maddie said, cutting off any argument between the kids before it could begin (although Jack wanted to know which part of Jazz’s statement the argument would have been about). “Well, you remember that he’s come by here, then, although so far it’s always been while you two were out.”

“Just been busy!” and, “Just bad timing!” Danny and Jazz insisted simultaneously.

Not avoiding him, then! thought Jack, hope rising in his chest. That was promising. “Hey, should we set up a time for you all to meet?”

Danny’s mouth snapped shut.

Jazz glanced at her brother, then frowned at her parents. “I think you should give it more than two and a half weeks of alliance before you try to make Phantom meet with other people. That’s not the kind of situation he acts comfortable in, usually. You need to give him more time to get comfortable with you first, not compound his stressors.”

“Ghost psychology at the table,” Danny admonished her, if weakly.

Jazz gave her brother a long-suffering look.

To Jack’s confusion, Danny gave her a grateful look back, before turning to their parents. “She’s right, though. Phantom might have reasons for avoiding someone that you just don’t know yet. You shouldn’t assume.”

Jack squinted at his son. Was there history there that he didn’t know about? He almost asked, but Danny’s nervous, sincere “Can it wait?” from earlier echoed through his mind, and he felt a sudden, sharp certainty that whatever his son had yet to tell him, Phantom was somehow involved.

… Jack’s and Maddie’s old perspective on ghosts had messed up more than just their own relationships, hadn’t it, Jack realized with a falling heart. He remembered telling their children over and over what all available research had said about what ghosts were and about how they acted, needing to make sure the hazards were understood by Jazz and Danny. Especially by Danny. Both of their kids were friendly enough to worry them on occasion, but on top of that, Danny was just so trusting, so potentially easy to lead into danger. … Or to lead to the right conclusions about ghosts, if only they had let him.

But they hadn’t. Danny had an almost uncanny knack for winding up near ghost fights, and Jack and Maddie had not primed him to react well to Phantom.

Oh, Danny-boy, what happened?

Swallowing the question along with his guilt, Jack asked Danny, “Would you prefer if we didn’t offer Phantom the spare bedroom, then?”

Danny’s face went blank with shock.

Jack heard his own words and cringed. So much for any of his or Maddie’s plans to build up to this slowly.

Jazz guffawed. Every eye snapped to her, and she slapped a hand over her mouth. “S-sorry!” she managed. “You, ummm, funny face.” Tears leaked from the scrunched-up corners of her eyes. “Just a funny face!”

“Wait, you two … want Phantom living here? Or not ‘living,’ I guess,” Danny amended, still looking dumbfounded. “Haunting? You want Phantom to haunt Fentonworks?”

“We just want to make him the offer,” Maddie said gently. “If you and your sister would be okay with it.”

Jazz gave them a thumbs-up with the hand that wasn’t busy stifling her ongoing laughter.

“Well … uh …” Danny looked so touched for a moment, presumably about being included in the conversation about maybe, sort-of, effectively expanding the Fenton clan.

Jack nodded at him in reassurance. “It’s a family decision, kiddo. We wouldn’t make it without you.”

Danny gave him a small, warm smile. Then, abruptly, he frowned. “Wait, what about the house’s anti-ghost defenses?”

“We’ve been turning them off anytime he says he’s coming by,” Maddie explained. She didn’t continue.

Jazz sobered at that. “Is the offer you want to make contingent on Phantom always telling you when he’s coming?”

“Or going,” Danny added. At Jazz’s eyebrow-raise, he shrugged and said, “I mean, he’s probably a good enough replacement security system while he’s here, but not while he’s gone. We are right on top of a portal. Attacks happen, sometimes.”

“That’s not sustainable,” said Jazz, her eyebrows furrowed with concern.

Danny shrugged again, sinking lower into his seat. “It works. Plus, he obviously knows where not to step if he needs to get to the portal or anything while the defenses are on. It’s not a huge deal; it’s just something that might, you know, make things easier on him, if you can fix it.”

Jazz shot her parents a look of annoyance. “You were making something to keep any of your weapons from locking onto Phantom, weren’t you? That was part of your agreement.”

“We got the portable weapons to ignore his ectosignature. The home defenses track spectral energy, not ectosignatures,” Jack explained.

“Then change them so you can exclude ectosignatures,” said Jazz. “You shouldn’t have things in his own — in a place you want him to feel safe in that treat him like an enemy.”

Jack winced. Yeah, that … could be an accident waiting to happen. He exchanged a glance with his wife, who looked similarly chagrined.

“Alright,” Maddie agreed. “We’ll work on that. It will take time to replace all of the sensors, but we can keep to turning them off whenever he’s here in the meantime.”

Danny studied them quietly for a moment before asking, “How long would it take?”

“Huh?” said Jack.

“To make and install all the replacement sensors you’ll need,” Danny clarified. “Um, without hitting pause on the thing you’re currently working on, maybe.”

Jack thought it over.

“Two weeks?” Maddie hazarded, right before Jack could give a similar estimate.

Danny’s eyes flashed with trepidation, but he nodded and swallowed. “You can ask him then.”

“What?” said Jack.

“Phantom. You can ask him if he wants the Ops Center room after you’ve finished with the sensors. I, uh … Jazz is right, I guess, so fix the security system and then I’ll be okay with you asking.” Danny swallowed again under his parents’ stares. “You said you wouldn’t ask until I agreed,” he reminded them.

Jazz beamed at her little brother like she couldn’t be prouder of him.

“But —” But I don’t want to treat giving the kid a place to stay like a reward for getting a tedious project done!

Jack’s daughter gave him a flat look. “Are you really going to finish fixing it, otherwise?”

“Of course we will!” Jack insisted. Jazz raised an eyebrow. “… Eventually.” Alright, he could see that it was important, but it was going to be boring and repetitive, which made it hard. He and Maddie hadn’t even finished setting up the offsite workstation that they needed to get up to safety inspection standards yet, and that was arguably less boring, since the to-do checklist at least wasn’t the same thing over and over again.

Danny snorted. “You see why I’m asking?”

Maddie swallowed. “Sweetie, I understand the concern, and it’s very thoughtful of you. I’m just worried that if something happens before we’re able to finish, and Phantom needs somewhere safe to go —”

“Well, yeah, sure, if there’s an emergency, of course it’d be fine,” Danny interrupted, sounding surprised that they would doubt it.

Jack smiled, his heart easing. They shouldn’t have doubted it: their Danny had always been fiercely protective, determined to help however he could when someone was hurt. Jack remembered having to convince his ten-year-old son to let go of Jazz after she’d sprained her ankle on a hike and to let his parents piggyback her to the GAV instead, Danny’s having been convinced that his being able to lift Jazz for a short time meant he should do it himself. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that that protectiveness could stretch to cover ghosts.

Maddie nodded. “You’re sure?” she checked with Danny. “We know you aren’t the most comfortable with ghosts.”

“I’m not comfortable with talking about ‘putrid piles of proto-plasm,’ especially when I’m trying to eat,” Danny corrected her with air quotes. “Actual ghosts don’t …” He hesitated, then set his jaw and said firmly, “If they aren’t causing any harm, I don’t have a problem with them.” He gave his parents a look that dared them to contradict him and gripped his knees.

… A month ago, Jack realized, they would have contradicted him. They would have told him there was no such thing as a ghost that wasn’t causing harm in at least some way, shape, or form. That causing harm was a ghost’s nature. Except, Phantom spent his time doing his best to help, and most of the ghosts they’d seen in the Zone left the living world alone without complaint, and even Phantom’s adversaries were demonstrably willing to limit the damage they did and spent only a small portion of their time making trouble.

“Phantom doesn’t do that,” Maddie assured their son.

Danny’s shoulders relaxed.

Jazz smirked at her mother. “I told you you were wrong about him.”

“We were wrong about a lot,” Jack admitted embarrassedly. They were going to have to explain how much of what they’d previously told their kids was false, if Phantom was ever going to stay here. Jack didn’t even know where to begin.

Jazz’s eyes lit. “Are the scientists finally listening to data?” she stage-whispered to Danny.

“They do engineering and molecular biophysics, not behaviorology,” Danny answered wearily, as if this was a familiar argument between them.

“It’s called ethology,” Jazz corrected him. “And it really doesn’t take a specialist to see glaring mistakes in the literature on ghost ethology. I did.”

“Jazz, I don’t know how many times you have to hear this before it’ll sink in, but your brain is weird and most people’s brains don’t do stuff like that.”

“It’s not that weird. Anyone could manage the same things if they paid attention and put in the work,” Jazz protested.

“And I guess this wasn’t the time it sunk in,” Danny concluded.

Jazz just patted his shoulder. “Eat your food before it gets cold. It’s going to reanimate if we have to use the ecto-powered microwave.”

“So …” Maddie broke in as the kids finally quieted and filled their mouths, a look of confusion on her face. “You both thought we were wrong?”

Danny swallowed so fast he couldn’t possibly have finished chewing. “Not about your physical science! You’re the best at that. And not about there being some ghosts who just want to take over or wreak havoc on Amity Park, because there definitely are and they’re obnoxious,” he said.

“But about other things,” was easy to infer. Jack frowned. “How come you never said anything?”

“Oh, I wonder why, Mr. ‘Don’t listen to Jazz, Danny, ghosts are just evil ectoplasmic clumps of post-human consciousness who should be ripped apart molecule by molecule,’” Jazz scoffed.

“Jazz,” Danny scolded, but he didn’t contradict her.

Jack’s shoulders fell. “Oh.”

Jack felt more than saw Danny eye him contemplatively while he chewed through another bite. At last, Danny asked, “What did finally make you guys change your mind?” There was no accusation in his voice like there had been in his sister’s, only hesitant curiosity.

Maddie and Jack exchanged a glance. Jack was still trying to figure out how to put what it felt like to have a ghost trust him into words when Maddie answered, slowly, “Phantom doesn’t … act so heroic, outside of confrontations.”

Danny gave her a dumbfounded look again. “Not acting like a hero is what did it?”

“I meant, he’s not so cocky and larger-than-life all the time,” Maddie said with the deliberation that came of carefully seeking the right words. “Most of the time, he acts exactly like a teenager. Just like you two.”

Yeah. That was it, wasn’t it? When they weren’t fighting him, interacting with Phantom felt so similar to interacting with their own kids. It wasn’t just the trust: it was the affection, the in-jokes, the mood swings, the embarrassed apologies, the subtle but constant checking that each other were okay, the … everything. They could only write so much of it off as manipulation or a trick before it became clear that it was something else entirely.

Jazz gave them a melancholy smile. “You realize that he acts like a teenager during ghost fights, too, right?” she told them. “Just one who’s compartmentalizing and concealing any fear underneath jokes and pretended confidence —”

“Jazz, seriously,” Danny whined, burying his face in his hands.

Jazz’s mouth snapped shut. “Sorry,” she told him, gently. To her parents, she said, “We really should talk more about ghost psychology when Danny isn’t around.”

Jack blinked a few times. Right — ghost psychology had apparently come up during that second incident with Freakshow last year. It had been one of those instances when most of the town had lost a few days, if not as bad as the incident that had also left dead vines all over town. The GIW had taken care of whatever had happened with Freakshow, but they hadn’t given the public an explanation. The kids seemed to remember more of it than Jack and Maddie did but wouldn’t talk about it either. Danny in particular avoided anything reminiscent of Freakshow.

“Or you could not,” Danny said flatly.

“Well, someone needs to overturn the old ghost ethology papers. And Mom and Dad are collaborating with researchers in other fields now,” Jazz argued.

“Not right now,” Maddie corrected her. “We have a lot of revision to do before any more research.”

Jazz shrugged. “Then we can talk about again it in a few weeks.”

“Jazz,” Danny complained.

“Danny,” Jazz answered.

The kids had a silent staring contest then for reasons Jack couldn’t decipher, at least until Jazz caved and said, “You won’t be involved at all. I just want Mom and Dad’s ectoscience credentials; it can be my project. It’s never too early to start working on my thesis, after all.”

“Jazz, you literally aren’t even a first-year yet,” Danny said in a tone of exasperation.

Jazz shrugged. “So? What else am I going to do all summer, besides annoy my little brother and the great Danny Phantom?” She added a grin when Danny gave her a flat look.

“That’s a great idea, Jazzypants!” said Jack. His little girl studying something that would bring her back to Amity Park regularly during college, not to mention that he and Maddie could work on with her? The notion eased some buried tightness in his chest. He would never admit to having felt relieved when Jazz had chosen to stay in-state instead of going to an Ivy League, but the feeling remained regardless. He doubted he would ever feel ready for his kids to live so far from home.

Maddie nodded. “Make sure you don’t try to include Phantom in the study unless he offers, though, alright, pumpkin? It wouldn’t be fair to him to ask,” she told Jazz.

“I won’t,” Jazz promised, smiling at her.

Danny smiled too and leaned back in his chair. “‘Acting like a teenager,’ huh?” he asked, softly.

Maddie just blinked at him, and Jack was forced to remember, again, that the two of them looking out for Phantom would still be startling behavior to their kids. But not unwelcome behavior, apparently.

Maddie shrugged in discomfort but nodded. “It … helped us realize some things,” she conceded.

Danny’s smile spread into a mischievous grin at the admission. “You know, I’m gonna be able to use that any time you tell me to act more mature for the rest of forever, now.”

“Danny —” Maddie started, tiredly.

“That’s fair,” Jazz backed her brother up, nodding.

“Jasmine —”

Jazz’s eyes sparkled playfully. “What? You just made a solid argument for teenagers to act their age; you can’t tell him not to heed it.”

Maddie put her face in her hands, though in a way that the rest of them could tell she didn’t really mean.

As the whole family laughed, even Maddie chuckling behind her hands, Jack warmed inside. The collective sound soothed him like the mending of a rift, and he gave up all attempts at keeping the volume of his own laughter down.

Their family was going to be okay.

… … …

Jack tossed the fudge pans into the fridge with a little under two hours to spare before Phantom was due for another round of ethics guidelines revisions. It should be enough time for the fudge to cool. He hoped he’d made enough that there would be some left when the kids got home from studying with friends. Most likely, he had: Maddie planned to invite Phantom to stay for dinner, with the option to take the food to go if he preferred not to stick around and eat with their kids, so if the ghost boy was that hungry, he’d wait for the meal instead of filling himself on fudge. Probably.

Jack popped a handful of the leftover candied pecans that hadn’t been used for fudge into his mouth. Time to see what progress Maddie had made on excluding Phantom’s ectosignature from their home defenses while he’d been baking. The two of them hadn’t yet finalized the plan for the home defense modifications: they didn’t want to switch the sensors completely over to ectosignature tracking when that was less reliable than spectral energy tracking in situations where you didn’t already know roughly where the ghost was, not if they didn’t have to. They didn’t want to leave room for accidents, either, though. Jack chewed as he thought through possible failsafes.

The home phone rang.

Jack dashed over to it. “Fento’worksh!” he answered, then swallowed. “This is Jack Fenton speaking!”

“This is Operative O of the Ghost Investigation Ward,” came the reply.

Jack froze solid.

O was clearly waiting for a response, but embarrassed horror had struck Jack dumb. He felt exactly like he’d run into an ex-friend: there was a sudden resurgence of old positive feelings, memories of childhood days spent watching the admittedly over-dramatized Ghost Escapades show based on the organization, of passing the first phase of GIW recruitment (even if he’d made it no further), of cooperating at least in small ways to keep Amity Park safe … and right alongside them, making them all the more painful, bitter grievances and dread about what the GIW might yet do to him and his. The Fentons and the GIW weren’t on the same side anymore. Unless the Ward reformed, they never would be again. The good times between them were gone, and Jack couldn’t help but long for their return at the same time as he balked and bit back nausea at the price that he would have to pay, that he would never pay, to get them back.

“Doctor Fenton?” asked O.

He wasn’t ready to face them, dammit!

“Yep,” Jack replied anyway, distantly. “Are you calling to place an order?” At the very least, he could make sure any further tech they sold to the GIW didn’t have a lot of destructive power and wouldn’t lock onto Phantom at all. The Ward would discard it and buy from someone else eventually, but short-term damage control was better than none.

“Equipment acquisition is handled by administrative agents,” O told him with an edge of annoyance. “I am calling about the ectoplasmic entity that self-identifies as Danny Phantom.”

Ice surged through Jack’s veins. “You have Phantom?” His voice was barely more than a whisper, a stark contrast to the sudden screaming of his thoughts. Phantom’s call button hadn’t gone off — would Huntress have another way of tracking him if they called her? Should they just take to the sky and scan for spectral energy, or else head directly for the nearest known GIW facility and hope he was there? They would take the Ops Center — in plane mode, it was faster than the Specter Speeder — he would need to pack an ectophobic toolset and ecto-dejecto along with the weapons —

“Negative,” said O, and Jack all but collapsed to the floor in relief.

Jack got in a single, stuttering breath before O continued, “Our records indicate that you have Phantom.”

“Huh? We don’t have him,” Jack answered shakily. Certainly not in the sense you mean. What records was O talking about?

“Your recent grant expenditures were for studies on a strongly humanoid class 7 spectral entity,” O explained.

“Oh, those,” said Jack. “We didn’t —”

O ignored him. “You caught a different spectral entity of that description?”

“No, I mean, we didn’t catch him for those tests. We just asked him. He’s a pretty cooperative ghost, really. We don’t have him captive.” Jack blinked, realizing the opportunity in front of him. If O had looked at their recent research records, then he already had evidence that the current understanding of ghosts wasn’t wholly accurate. “We’ve been finding out a lot about ghosts lately, actually! There’s tons a’ new information with the portal and all the agreements between ghosts or ghosts and ghost hunters. We’re gonna have to rework the basic framework of how ghosts’ physical forms work based on Phantom, and the framework for ghost behavior should change too! There’s a lot more complexity that we didn’t know about before!”

O was silent a moment, Jack assumed to process that information and all of its implications, but when he spoke, all he said was, “You have research access to Danny Phantom. Do you have proven sedative and anti-phasing agents?”

“Huh?” Jack blinked, his thoughts sputtering to a halt as the conversation jumped the rails of the track he expected it to take.

O repeated himself.

Jack frowned. “We’ve got an ectophobic coating that’s gotta be the best on the market, and a ghost knockout gas for enclosed spaces,” he answered at last, confused about why O was asking after the Fentonworks catalog if he didn’t want to buy anything.

“Injected agents,” O clarified.

“Er, no.” Jack scratched his neck.

O told him, “Understood. We will send you a mobile containment unit and an injected anti-phasing agent that has proven effective on Danny Phantom before, along with a sedative in the same cla—”

“You drugged him?!” Jack broke in in a swell of outrage. “I’m just not big on injections,” echoed through his mind in Phantom’s voice. He didn’t think he’d ever felt so ready to wring someone’s neck. Electrocuted, collared, drugged, nearly muzzled — What the hell else did you do to my kid?

O hadn’t yet regrouped from the interruption when the rest of the implications caught up with Jack. Jack clenched the phone so hard the plastic creaked. “You can’t make us catch Phantom for you!”

“We’re with the federal government. We can do whatever we want,” said O.

“No you can’t! Not that!” Mainly because Jack and Maddie wouldn’t, but enough sense broke through Jack’s anger to remind him that the GIW couldn’t do it anyway. Maddie had made sure of it before they’d signed any grant contracts, convinced that the government would try to claim all of the most interesting research specimens they caught if it wasn’t clearly written that the Fentons would never have to turn a ghost over to them.

Jack shook his head, at a complete loss for how to explain that to this pompous operative. “Maddie!” he yelled.

His wife must have heard the urgency in his voice, because she was upstairs in record time. “Jack?” She glanced at the phone he was squeezing the life out of. “Who’s calling?”

“It’s the Guys in White,” Jack told her.

Maddie made her most unimpressed face. “What do they want?”

Jack swallowed. “Phantom. They want us to give them Phantom.”

The sudden, sharp coldness in Maddie’s eyes stopped him from saying anything further. She stalked over to him and snatched the phone, not bothering to move back to a comfortable speaking distance before she started talking to Operative O.

“While I’m flattered by your agency’s confidence in our capture abilities,” Maddie said icily, “Phantom is a very powerful and clever ghost, and we have never been able to keep him captive. Even if you had any right to demand him, he isn’t ours to give you.”

“You have physical research access to him,” O countered.

“We wanted to run noninvasive tests on him and negotiated with him for his participation. If you want to do the same, I suggest you try the same method.” But I’ll do my level best to see that you don’t succeed, was obvious from her tone.

“‘Negotiate’ with him again, then,” O said annoyedly. “We’ll send you a sedative and anti-phasing agent. Tell the ghost whatever you want about what it’s for and inject it, then use the …”

O kept talking. Jack stopped hearing. There was a ringing in his ears and he felt far too hot — no, far too cold — far too some temperature — unwillingly envisioning a different version of the moment he’d injected the contrast dye for Phantom’s CT scan: Phantom trembling for reasons Jack hadn’t understood at the time but understood much too clearly now, while some monster in Jack’s guise took that precious, determined trust and betrayed it.

“Like hell we will!” Jack yelled, more of a curse than he or Maddie had said aloud since their children had first begun to speak. The phone was still close enough to him that O must have heard.

With an equally strong but far colder fury, Maddie told the operative, “No.”

“We’re using eminent domain,” O said stubbornly. “Your research subjects are your property. Paragraph 14 of your research grant, 13.608. Failure to hand over the spectral entity will be a violation of federal law.”

A stone weight settled in Jack’s stomach. Was that … actually how they’d worded the grant agreement’s clause about getting to keep their research subjects? He looked to Maddie, silently begging her to gainsay it, but she looked away.

Maddie’s jaw worked as she slowly unclenched her teeth. She hissed into the phone, “Phantom has human intelligence. I have data proving that.”

“Irrelevant,” O dismissed, and now Maddie’s hand was the one making the old phone creak from applied pressure.

“He’s a teenager,” said Jack.

“He’s a ghost. An adolescent class seven spectral entity closely intertwined with crossings to and from the Ghost Zone. Artificial stimulation of his core will grant us superior understanding and control over ghost portals.”

“That kind of procedure would be like doing brain and heart surgery at the same time, in the dark, if you could make a ghost core tangible enough to access —” Maddie started to explain.

“Prior tests on the ghost confirm we can,” O interrupted.

Maddie’s stance shifted. Jack would have reacted much more vehemently to O’s remark if every instinct wasn’t instead busy screaming at him to get out of the way and to let his wife take down the (in this case metaphorical, although he did scan the living room to check) pack of ghosts by herself, lest her mother-bear instincts key into him by accident.

Jack stepped back.

Maddie said to O, “I don’t think you all understand the relationship between Phantom and Amity Park.” She paused, and even Operative O seemed to have enough sense of the danger not to try speaking himself yet. “Phantom protects Amity Park.”

O said, “The ghost’s apparent deeds are irrelevant to —”

“Let me finish,” Maddie snarled. O stopped, possibly involuntarily. “Phantom protects Amity Park. And Amity Park protects Phantom. Stay away from our ghost boy.” She slammed the phone onto its hook.

Operative O did not redial.

A minute or two — or more; Jack had lost all semblance of a sense of time — later, Maddie began shaking from aftershock.

Jack might have been doing the same. He didn’t know. He wanted desperately to hold onto someone, preferably his whole family at once and Phantom too. “Mads,” he said, gently, coming over to touch her shoulder.

Maddie didn’t move. Distantly, she muttered, “So that’s what it was.”

“Mads?” Jack asked worriedly.

Maddie shook her head and finally straightened up. She leaned against her husband but didn’t yet accept the offered hug. “What they did to him,” she clarified. “Why he had to use his wail. That’s a last resort measure, Jack. He would have waited and broken out a different way if he hadn’t been … if they hadn’t …”

Jack pulled her tighter, remembering the look of abject horror on her face when she’d learned that little tidbit of what the Sonic Suppressor test had forced Phantom to remember, the immediacy with which she’d sworn to keep the GIW from ever harming their ally again. Remembering the ghost boy crying in their arms. Maddie always had been quick on the uptake.

(Had the attempted muzzling been meant to keep the Guys in White from hearing Phantom’s screams?)

Maddie finally turned in to Jack’s hug, and he promised her fiercely, “We won’t let them touch him, Maddie.”

Maddie nodded against him. He heard her suck in a breath, then tell him, wetly, “Lawyer.”

“I don’t think our traffic court guy does federal ghost law,” Jack began, and promptly stopped. Vlad had offered them his own legal team just a few weeks ago, should they ever need it against the GIW. Jack almost smiled from sheer relief. “Vladdie! Give me the phone, Mads, we’ve gotta call him!”

Maddie hesitated. She sniffled as she let go to look him in the eye. “Jack, they don’t … get along,” she said, meaning Vlad and Phantom, presumably. “I’m not sure that he’s who we want to help us with this.”

Jack blinked at her in bafflement. “But it’s Vlad! There’s nothing we can’t figure out when the three of us work together. And he doesn’t like the GIW; he said we could use his legal team against them and everything!”

“The legal team, we do need.” Maddie sighed. “I’ll call him.” She picked the phone back up and dialed before Jack could ask again for her to hand off the phone to him.

The phone rang, and rang, quiet in reality but sounding all too loud in the silence of the room. The call went to voicemail.

Maddie sighed more heavily. “Vlad, this is Maddie, please call back when you get the chance,” she told the machine, then hung up. “Well.” She wiped her eyes. “I suppose we should —”

The phone rang.

Maddie picked it up again. “Hello?”

“Maddie, my dear!” Jack heard Vlad say clearly, then more that Jack couldn’t make out from how close Maddie had pressed the phone to her own ear.

Jack took a step back and slumped in relief. Help was coming. There truly wasn’t anything the three of them couldn’t puzzle their way through together, and Vlad had always been the best of them at finding ways to deal with meddlesome officials. If Ghost Investigation Ward didn’t agree to back off, they wouldn’t even know what hit ‘em.

“No, Jack and I are perfectly fine, and I was just closer to the home phone,” Maddie answered Vlad’s questions. “Vlad, we need to borrow your lawyers; the GIW are harassing us. Could you send us —”

Vlad cut her off with a sound of dismay. The only bit Jack got of what he said next was “for the day.”

Maddie grimaced. “Alright, fine.” She hung up again.

“What is it?” Jack asked anxiously.

“He said none of his legal team is at work right now, but he’ll come over to figure what to tell them tomorrow.”

“Oh! That’s good, at least!” Jack said, shoving as many of his worries as he could down underneath his optimism in an attempt to cheer his wife.

“Mm,” Maddie replied.

Not five minutes later, Vlad knocked on their door.

Jack rushed to answer it. “V-man!” he greeted, sweeping his best friend into a hug. He could still remember how prim and reserved Vlad had been when they’d met at the beginning of college, how much his friend had opened up and let loose under the onslaught of Fenton affection.

“Let go of me, you oaf!” Vlad responded, as always. Jack grinned and set him down. Vlad turned to Jack’s wife, brushing the wrinkles out of his suit jacket. “My dear Maddie. What’s the trouble that you’ve been having with the GIW?”

Maddie pursed her lips. “They seem to think our research grant gives them a right to demand we catch Phantom for them,” she grit out.

“Oh, dear. And you object?” Vlad asked, his expression so keen as to almost look anxious. Maddie’s own expression must have made it plain to him that she did object, and possibly also that his asking did no favors for her affection for him, because Vlad quickly continued, “Well, I’m certain something can be worked out if we look through a copy of the grant agreement. Could you rustle it up, my dear? And Jack, please show me where the restroom is, again? I’m afraid I’ve forgotten.”

Maddie’s scowl deepened, but she turned for the basement to dig up their copy of the grant agreement while Jack ushered Vlad through the living room.

Vlad stared after Maddie as they walked. “What unfortunate timing for a great opportunity, hm?” he asked Jack when Maddie was too far down the stairs to watch any longer.

Jack blinked. “What d’you mean, Vladdie?”

“Oh, just that I remember how hard you took it when you didn’t pass the second phase of GIW recruitment. To think, you finally have something they want; you could leverage that into working as closely with them as you like, if you decided to. An exciting prospect, isn’t it?”

“Oh.” Jack reviewed everything that the call with the GIW had made him feel. “Excitement” wasn’t on the list. The GIW just weren’t colleagues in his mind anymore, nor even complicated peers, but instead something less than a step removed from enemies. The realization and Vlad’s comment left a new pang in his chest. He’d idolized them since childhood.

“It’s funny, huh?” Jack said, his voice not quite concealing his sadness. “I wanted to work with ‘em for so long.”

Vlad opened the bathroom door unprompted — Jack supposed seeing it again must have jogged his memory — and leaned against the doorframe. “You know, the simplest way out of any legal trouble is to ensure that there’s never a case at all. If Maddie is feeling squeamish about what the GIW asked you to do, you could always … do it on your own.”

Jack’s brain stuttered in shock. He hadn’t even fully processed the suggestion before he blurted out a knee-jerk, “We’re a team, Vladdie, I’m not gonna go behind her back!”

“A husband should be able to protect his wife in such situations,” Vlad countered.

“Maddie’s smarter and tougher than either of us, Vlad —”

“Half-true,” Vlad muttered.

“— And she’s just as old as us. She doesn’t need anybody treating her like a kid.” Jack’s mental processing finally caught up. “And neither of us is gonna give the GIW Phantom; they’d hurt him!”

Vlad stared at Jack. “He’s a ghost,” he said, sounding simultaneously dismissive and baffled. “A more humanoid one, perhaps, but does your blundering heart bleed for ghosts all of a sudden?”

“I — yeah.”

Jack didn’t think he’d seen Vlad that stunned since the first time Maddie had kept up with one of Vlad’s mathematical analyses.

Jack breathed deep and shoved down the guilt and anger about Vlad’s shocked reaction. Vlad hadn’t seriously studied ectoscience since the eighties; of course he didn’t understand. That didn’t mean he couldn’t.

“There’s a lot we got wrong about ghosts, Vladdie,” Jack explained. “We’ve gotta show you the new data. Ghosts have political alliances and cultural norms and weird physics that they understand like human physicists do.” Clockwork’s easy explanation of time loops, Phantom’s casual description of what he was doing to entropy while making nevermelt ice. Dorathea’s alliance with Phantom against the previous anchor spirit of her lair, Ember’s distressed apology about bringing up Phantom’s death, Skulker’s keeping other ghosts off of Phantom’s back while Phantom was recovering from his run-in with the GIW. “I can’t just let ‘em get torn apart anymore.”

Vlad’s mouth quirked unhappily. Jack sympathized, to an extent. Black and white situations were far easier to deal with than the mess they now found themselves in, and Vlad would have unhappy citizens to answer to while they stumbled their way towards finding better ways of managing the town’s ghost problems.

“Vlad —” Jack started, trying to come up with a good way of apologizing for making everything so complicated, but Vlad shut the bathroom door in his face.

Jack slumped. He turned to go join Maddie in the lab.

The printer was running when Jack got to the stairs, with Maddie standing in front of it and frowning at a page in her hand. He walked over to her slowly.

Maddie gave him a brief glance of acknowledgment before returning to the paper. “The word is ‘obtained,’” she told him. “‘All research specimens obtained by the grant recipients are to be considered their private property.’ I don’t know if that’s specific enough that we can argue it doesn’t apply to him, or not.” There was a frustrated and slightly hysterical edge to her voice.

Jack stared helplessly at the still-printing pages. GIW grant agreements hadn’t been standardized until the agency’s funding had increased in the aftermath of Ghost King incident, and his and Maddie’s grant was one of the older ones that had been painstakingly negotiated, but neither of the Fentons had imagined a scenario where a ghost would act as a willing research participant back then. He didn’t know if they’d find anything in the agreement’s wording that could help them now.

“Maybe … maybe ‘specimen?’” Jack offered. “He’s as sapient as any living teenager. We could argue that that doesn’t apply?” But that argument didn’t sound like any more of a guaranteed win than Maddie’s had, and Jack couldn’t stomach the idea of this case’s outcome being left to chance.

“I don’t know.” Maddie frustratedly tossed the page back onto the pile of its fellows. She laughed without humor. “If we go to jail over this, he’s going to keep breaking us out, isn’t he? I can’t imagine that ending well.”

Jack shook the image of policemen getting hilariously frustrated over a pair of detainees who kept being turned invisible and intangible out of his mind. “It won’t come to that, Mads,” he promised her.

His wife nodded shakily and handed him the back half of the now fully-printed grant agreement, her silent instruction clear. They leaned against each other for comfort as they scanned their respective halves of the agreement for other possible loopholes.

Vlad cleared his throat at the top of the steps some minutes later. Jack pulled slightly away from Maddie to look up, but he didn’t let go. Vlad’s expression was sour, doubtless from contemplating all the consequences of what Jack had revealed about ghosts.

“We have the grant agreement here, Vlad,” Maddie told him, also not letting go. “You can take it to your lawyers. They might see something we haven’t yet. Here.” She took the pages Jack was holding and proffered the whole to Vlad.

Vlad came down to accept them. “Thank you, my dear.”

“Now, I don’t think we’ll get much more done today —” Maddie began.

Vlad interrupted, “What progress have you made?”

“There’s some words we think don’t apply to Phantom, maybe!” Jack answered. He pointed out paragraph 14’s “obtained” and “specimen” and summarized as well as he could what Operative O had told them.

Vlad simply nodded, eyes on the page. “I see,” he said, sounding judgmental and unimpressed. Jack winced. Vlad clapped his hands together. “Well! I will need to speak with my lawyers about wording arguments. However, I certainly have a few suggestions on how to, ah, limit the legal damage, based on my experience with the spurious lawsuits disgruntled businessmen have tried to throw at me.”

“What have you got, V-man?” Jack prompted, relaxing slightly. Whatever his thoughts on ghosts, Vlad clearly meant to stand by his friends. The harsh world of corporate and political power struggles hadn’t changed that about Jack’s best friend.

Vlad gave a satisfied smile. “Well. To start with, you can quite easily cut the damage in half. Both of you want to defy them, but the effect is the same if only one of you does. You can pretend that the other would be cooperative, if only her partner weren’t playing keep-away with the little … banshee.”

Maddie frowned hard at him. “Alright. I’ll do that, and we can keep Jack legally in the clear.”

Jack straightened up in protest.

“Ah,” Vlad replied before Jack could, wincing. “But surely, my dear, with your expertise, it would be better for you to be in the clear so you can make the arguments about why ‘specimen’ shouldn’t apply?”

“We don’t need an ectobiologist for that,” Maddie argued.

“Oh, but it’s not a trivial argument. The best legal precedent at present is for ghosts to be considered remains of the deceased, which would hardly keep the little banshee from being autopsied. Every bit of expertise we can bring to the table counts.”

Autopsied. Jack’s blood pressure dropped so fast he missed Maddie’s reply. He barely kept himself standing. He’d observed an autopsy once, in a case where the family of the deceased had been convinced ghosts were involved in the death (though the lack of ectoplasm in the remains had ultimately proven otherwise). It was all too easy to picture the same room, the same table, the same set of organ containers ready and waiting, but with the central figure replaced by Phantom, strapped down but screaming and thrashing as best he could, or else frozen and crying in silent terror, or else, worst yet, pliant and limp, all the spark gone from his eyes.

Where is he? I need to see he’s okay, Jack thought so desperately that he assumed he was imagining things when he heard Phantom’s voice.

“I didn’t realize you needed to get my ethics suggestions peer reviewed.”

Jack closed his eyes and tried to steady himself.

“Phantom!” Maddie replied. (Replied? Jack wasn’t imagining it, then!) “Oh, it’s Monday afternoon, I completely forgot!”

Jack finally turned to look. Phantom was hovering at the top of the stairs with a sour expression on his face, making a strange echo of Vlad a few minutes ago. He didn’t look happy. But he was here, and he was safe, and he was whole.

Jack was running up the stairs before he could stop himself. Phantom turned towards him, surprised but not alarmed. He stiffened for only a moment when Jack wrapped his arms around him and pulled him close, cradling the ghost boy’s head against his chest. He could feel the tension bleed out of both of their bodies at once.

Phantom was okay. He was okay. Everything was okay.

“Uh. Not that I don’t appreciate the warm welcome,” Phantom said after a moment, “but you’re making me a little concerned about whatever’s going on.”

“It’s gonna be okay,” Jack promised him. “No one’s gonna lay a hand on you.”

“That … did not just make me less concerned. What’s going on?” Phantom pulled his head back enough to peer down at Maddie and Vlad.

“Ah, hello, Phantom. Were your ears burning?” Jack heard Vlad ask.

Phantom tensed as if bracing himself. He told Vlad, “We have check-ins on Monday afternoons. What are you doing here?”

“Believe it or not, child, I am here to fix the consequences of your mistake,” Vlad answered.

Jack turned around. What was Vlad talking about?

“What ‘mistake?’” Phantom asked.

Vlad examined his fingernails. “You were aware that the Fentons had a preexisting funding agreement with the GIW when you made your own little bargain. Apparently, it never crossed your mind to examine the details of that agreement. I suppose I can’t entirely blame you, with as poor as the guidance you’ve had so far has been —”

The temperature dropped as Vlad went on, Phantom’s aura flaring colder and colder.

“Vlad, this isn’t his fault!” Maddie cut him off.

Phantom flew down and grabbed the papers from Vlad’s hands. Vlad made no move to stop him. They all held their breath as Phantom read through the grant agreement, looking increasingly uncomfortable but not yet alarmed.

When he reached the end of the page with paragraph 14, Vlad interrupted to ask, “See the problem?”

“No,” Phantom admitted in frustration.

Vlad tapped the offending paragraph, drawing the ghost’s eyes back to it. “You volunteered yourself as a research specimen, Phantom. And now the GIW is making use of eminent domain.”

“That’s for houses,” Phantom protested.

“It is, in fact, for any private property that the government decides it needs.”

Phantom’s eyes widened in fear.

Maddie shot Vlad a look of displeasure and put a hand on Phantom’s shoulder. The ghost was hovering in between Vlad and Maddie, and he drifted closer to her at the touch. “It’s okay, moonbeam,” she reassured him, her voice gentle. “We won’t let them take you. The only thing we’re discussing is how to handle any legal case they try to hit us with when they realize that.”

Phantom looked at her. “What do they even want you to do? It’s not like you have me, technically, and they can’t come to Amity Park anyway —”

“Whatever gave you that impression, little banshee?” Vlad interrupted.

Phantom’s head whipped around, eyes narrowed. After a moment of glaring, he demanded, “What did you do to the sanctuary city laws?”

Vlad snorted. “Absolutely nothing. Were you under the impression that they somehow prevent the GIW from entering the city? Not passing any civics classes this year, I see.”

Despite his obvious fear, Phantom bristled.

“What do you mean, Vladdie?” Jack asked, still frozen on the stairs. That was what the sanctuary laws did, wasn’t it? The GIW hadn’t come here in person ever since the laws had been passed.

Vlad pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sanctuary laws, you simpleton, prohibit municipal employees like the police from cooperating with the federal agency in question. Visits aren’t prohibited. And as for their not having you, Phantom, you’ve made it very clear that you’ll sit still for them. All it would take on their part is a little misdirection.” Phantom drifted back, hugging his chest. “Unless, of course, one of them were to warn you against any trickery, leaving the other legally in the clear.”

Maddie turned a piercing stare on her friend. “Vlad … you just warned him.”

Vlad stopped. “Ah,” he said, slowly. “I suppose I did.”

Phantom’s shoulders fell. He snorted. “Well played, Vlad.”

Vlad glared at the ghost, then took a deep breath and seemed to recoup. “Very well. We can take measures to ensure any case would be leveled against me instead of against you. A wealthy and well-respected mayor is much more difficult to prosecute, after all. All you’ll need to do, Maddie, Jack, is sign a general contract transferring any rights you may have over Phantom to me —”

“Absolutely not!” Phantom broke in, panicked.

Vlad eyed him. “It’s meaningless, of course. Just a document. You hardly listen to authority anyway.”

Jack blinked in surprise, because that hadn’t been his and Maddie’s experience of the ghost. Phantom’s first impulse always seemed to be to do what they asked. But maybe the ghost boy was like Jack, who’d always had an easy time following orders that made sense to him or that came from people he trusted and a hard time following any others.

“No,” Phantom repeated.

Vlad clicked his tongue. “Come now, child. Are you so callous as to instead sic prosecutors on your own dear … allies, over your own mistake in judgment?”

Phantom fell silent and still.

Maddie spoke up in his stead. “Thank you, Vlad, but no.”

Vlad turned slowly, blinking at her. “Madeline, I am trying to help you,” he said.

“Then send us your lawyers, Vlad. We’ll figure something out. There has to be a way to make them back off altogether; we’ll find it. We’ll … we’ll find it.” The confidence in her voice faltered at the end, and she looked around the room desperately, as if it would give her answers. She caught Jack’s eyes as he wrestled with the question of why Phantom had reacted to Vlad’s last question as if it were a threat, then Phantom’s as he looked at her as if she’d hung the stars. Her gaze lingered there.

Phantom’s eyes flicked between Maddie and Vlad, then abruptly widened. “Hire them,” he said.

“What?” Vlad replied, startled.

“Hire them,” Phantom repeated. “Sanctuary laws. City employees can’t cooperate with the Guys in White.”

Jack saw Maddie’s own eyes widen in appreciation.

Vlad frowned, as if he were annoyed. “That wouldn’t supersede eminent domain laws, Phantom.”

“But they don’t have me right now,” Phantom pointed out. The ghost crossed gazes with Maddie, and Maddie immediately picked up the thread.

“They didn’t ask us just to hand him to them, they asked us to catch him for them. With their equipment.”

“That sounds a lot like cooperation to me,” said Phantom.

Vlad looked like he’d swallowed a lemon. “There aren’t any unfilled municipal positions right now —”

“The last mayor was able to hire us to a task force,” Maddie told him.

Phantom grimaced at the reminder, but then he brightened. He turned to Vlad. “Plus, you keep telling me your office gets so many calls complaining about me. I’m sure it would be a huge help to have someone to redirect those calls to, if there are that many of them.”

“And we can work on improving the town’s ghost defenses when we aren’t fielding calls,” added Maddie.

“And set up a ghost alert system that people will actually use as intended because it goes to them and then to me,” Phantom suggested.

Jack stared at them. Maddie and Phantom bounced off of each other so easily, completely in tune with each other, just like Maddie and Danny sometimes did. Despite everything, Jack couldn’t help but smile.

Maddie nodded her agreement to the suggestion. “Of course. That does sound like enough work to justify a pair of part-time positions. Unless money is the issue?” she asked Vlad, too sweetly.

“Not at all,” Vlad immediately denied.

“Wonderful!” Maddie’s smile was as over-bright as her voice was cloying. “Thank you so much for the help, Vlad. When can Jack and I expect these official jobs to start?”

Phantom put in, “Considering that I’m sure you don’t want to delay helping your own dear friends.”

Vlad frowned at him. Phantom stared back, crossing his arms and floating up until he was at Vlad’s eye level. Jack came down the stairs, and Maddie held a hand out for him to take without looking away from the apparent staring contest between the mayor and the town hero.

“You do leave me quite expensive messes to clean up,” Vlad said eventually.

Phantom cocked his head. “I wonder what brought the GIW’s attention down on the Fentons in the first place,” he countered, accusation in his tone.

Vlad scoffed. “Please, child. You made a very public alliance and then used their research funds. Being able to read the writing on the wall does not make me its author.”

Phantom slumped a little and nodded.

Vlad shook his head. “It’s a pity,” he said. “Every time you show a hint of intelligence, you snuff it out just as fast. You could learn to avoid these kinds of mistakes with proper training.”

“At least my mistakes don’t almost destroy the town,” Phantom retorted, while Maddie bridled at the insult on his behalf.

“It’s called ‘risk management’ and ‘running cost-benefit analyses,’ Phantom. They are skills you can be taught.” Vlad adjusted his suit lapels.

Phantom said, “You and I have very different ideas of acceptable costs.”

“Is that so?” Vlad asked mildly.

Phantom glared and opened his mouth, then promptly snapped it shut and let all his breath out through his teeth. “Are you gonna answer my — Maddie’s question?” he forced out.

Vlad shrugged, as if he’d just lost a match of a game. “Oh, very well. I will get an employment contract to you first thing tomorrow, my dear.”

“And to Jack,” Maddie insisted. “We are a team. I can’t do this job without him.”

Jack squeezed her hand.

“Yes, yes, of course. They’ll be delivered by noon.”

“Thank you,” Maddie told Vlad.

“Thanks, Vladdie!” said Jack.

Vlad eyed the ghost boy expectantly. Phantom rolled his eyes, but he sounded sincere when he finally said, “Thanks.”

Vlad nodded. “Well. I’ll go draw up some suitable contracts. Do let me know if you have any further troubles.” He left with only the briefest exchange of goodbyes.

Phantom collapsed into a lab chair and put his head in his hands as soon as the mayor was gone. Jack looked at him worriedly, an “Are you alright?” warring on his tongue with an apology about the horrific legal position their research grant had put the boy in. He got neither out before Phantom said, “I’m sorry.”

Jack stared at him in bafflement. Maddie, closer to his chair, put a hand on his back.

“You haven’t done anything wrong, moonbeam,” Maddie told him.

Phantom shook his head. “I should’ve looked at the grant. I knew you had it; I knew you were gonna use it. I should’ve thought of what the GIW could do with it —”

“No,” Maddie insisted, cutting him off. She cast a glance at Jack, and Jack could see the horror he felt reflected in her eyes. It was their fault. They’d negotiated that grant agreement, every damning word of it. What had happened to the kid that he thought he needed to apologize for an agreement he hadn’t made that treated him like a thing?

“I knew they still wanted me,” Phantom insisted.

“So did we.” Jack stepped over and crouched in front of him. “We knew it too. It was our grant. It was our fault. I’m so sorry, kiddo. We’re gonna fix it, I swear. It’ll be okay.”

Phantom just kept shaking his head. “I told him to make you work for him. He’s gonna be awful about it. I shouldn’t have, I, I don’t even know what I was thinking —”

“You were brilliant,” Maddie insisted.

That finally got Phantom to stop. He looked up at Maddie, surprised and clearly touched.

Maddie blinked at the ghost’s reaction. Then she smiled and moved her hand up to his cheek. “You’re so smart, moonbeam. Vlad’s blind if he can’t see that,” she went on. She stroked her thumb along his cheekbone, and Phantom leaned into the touch, humming softly in contentment.

“You really are,” Jack agreed. “You’re a little genius. Vlad’s just bad-tempered like that, y’know? He just says things.”

Phantom sighed at him. “Whatever you do, don’t sign anything he sends you if it says you have to have private meetings with him, or really that you have to do anything either alone or with only him, okay?”

Jack frowned. “Why not?” he said, as if they hadn’t just given Phantom an excellent reason to be wary of their contracts. Still, Phantom’s suggestion was strangely specific.

Phantom gave him a pained look. “Can you just trust me on this?”

“Yes,” Maddie answered, drawing his attention back to her. “We can do that.”

Phantom relaxed a little. “Thank you.”

Jack kept frowning. “Don’t face them without backup” was an instruction for an enemy. There’d even been a note to that effect in one of Phantom’s ghost adversary files, the Plasmius one. Jack didn’t want to think it of Vlad, but between how casually Vlad had suggested Jack give Phantom to the Guys in White and how convincing Vlad had always been during their college games of seeing who could tell the most outlandish lie with a straight face —

“Phantom, do you think Vlad did call the GIW?” Jack asked before he could mull it over any longer. A pit yawned his stomach at the sound of his own words.

Phantom shook his head. “He’s never lied about that before.”

The pit abated for just a moment before gaping wider.

Maddie stilled. “Vlad’s called them on you before?”

“Uh,” said Phantom, his eyes widening like he hadn’t meant to tell them that. “Not — uh, not for a while now?”

Maddie swore.

Phantom whipped his head to the side to stare at her in open-mouthed shock.

Jack swallowed thickly. His heart ached. Vlad was his best friend; how could he have done something that would all but make them enemies? Jack wished dearly that he could be sure Vlad would stop now, but deep down, he wasn’t sure. Vlad was one of the most stubborn people he’d ever met. “We’ve gotta get you some kind of legal protection.”

“Yeah, good look with that, the best that ghosts have gotten so far legally is to be classified as remains,” Phantom answered him, still gawking at Maddie like she’d grown a third ear.

Maddie asked sourly, “Did Vlad tell you that?”

“No, I have a friend — ally —” Phantom stopped, then took a deep breath and continued firmly, “friend, and also ally, who likes to mock up cases against the GIW to de-stress.”

… How many of Phantom’s allies did he have a closer connection with, at that? Probably all of them, actually.

“Can we talk with your friend?” Maddie pressed.

Phantom shrugged. “I can ask her. She isn’t a lawyer, though.” He blinked. “Though actually, why didn’t you guys call a lawyer about this?”

Maddie made a face. “We called Vlad to ask for his lawyers.”

“And then he came himself without lawyers,” Phantom surmised, matching Maddie’s tone.

“He said his lawyers had gone home for the day,” Jack put in, wanting to defend his friend at least that far.

“I’m sure.” Phantom shook his head, and when he spoke again, the bitterness had been dislodged from his voice. “Why Vlad, though? He’s not the only stupid-rich person in town with a grudge against the Guys in White. You know the Mansons, don’t you?”

Maddie grimaced.

For some reason, that made Phantom laugh. “I mean, yeah, they’re awful. But they’ve also got just … so many pending lawsuits against the GIW.”

“We’ll call them,” Maddie promised him, managing a smile. “We’ll, we’ll get them to recommend a lawyer to look over the contracts Vlad sends us.”

Phantom gave her a look of pure relief.

Maddie nodded, seemingly more to herself than to Phantom. “And we’ll talk to them about their lawsuits once we’ve worked the employment out. I’m sure at least some of the cases must be against the operatives who keep coming after you.” Her smile turned predatory.

Phantom eyed her warily. “What are you planning?”

“Oh, nothing, moonbeam. We’ll just make sure those operatives know we aren’t comfortable talking about this over the phone anymore because of the legal complications of being city employees. We’ve already told them that we won’t help them. If they sound like they want to keep pressing in person, we’ll just let the police and the Mansons’ lawyers know.” Maddie stroked Phantom’s hair as she spoke, her gaze on the middle distance. The sharp smile never left her face.

“I don’t think the police like me,” Phantom said.

“Nah, they love you!” Jack told him. “One of ‘em let me out of a traffic ticket the week after we allied! Said to keep fighting the good fight with ya.”

Phantom groaned and flopped back in his chair, dislodging Maddie’s hand. The chair wheeled a few inches away from the flop’s momentum. “How come bullies always like me?” he asked the ceiling.

“Well, whatever the reason, it’s good for you in this case,” Maddie told him. “Especially because Amity Park has its own penitentiary and none of them have to cooperate with any GIW agents who try to extract arrested operatives.”

Phantom stared at her. “You’re gonna turn the police on the Guys in White.”

Maddie focused on the ghost again. Her smile softened, and her eyes turned sad. “We’re going to take care of the people trying to hurt you, Phantom. Whatever that involves.”

Phantom ducked his head and chuckled. The sound was less amused than amazed. “You really don’t do anything halfway, do you?” he asked, his voice full of wonder and affection.

“All or nothing is the Fenton way, Phantom!” Jack told him.

The ghost boy shook his head. “And yet somehow people wonder why I never worried you’d betray an alliance.”

Oh.

Jack shared an achingly fond look with Maddie. Phantom had known, hadn’t he? He’d known before the Fentons had even imagined it that there would be no turning back from an alliance. Once they said they would have his back, they meant it. All the way.

Maybe Phantom’s trust in them hadn’t been quite as radical as Jack had thought.

Maddie reached around the back of the lab chair to hug their ally tight. “Never,” she agreed.

Jack set a hand on Phantom’s knee, breathing carefully to keep his eyes dry. Man, but he cared about this little ghost. “You know you’re always welcome here, right, kiddo?” Jack insisted. “Anytime. Maddie and I are fixing the defense system so it won’t get you if you step in the wrong place. We’ll get rid of anything that —”

Jack stopped abruptly, his heart plummeting in his chest.

“There shouldn’t be anything here that treats him like an enemy,” Jazz had told him.

Vlad had called the GIW on Phantom. The GIW who intended to systematically “stimulate” — almost certainly via electricity — Phantom’s core. Maybe Vlad would never do something like that again, now that Jack had told him the truth about ghosts. But he might. If it would buy him something important, he might.

“You and I have very different ideas of acceptable costs.”

“Jack?” Phantom asked, peering at him with concern.

Right; Jack needed to finish his sentence. Jack couldn’t finish his sentence without banning Vlad from his house. Vlad, his best friend, who’d understood him in a way no one he’d met before college ever had, who Jack had waited twenty long years to hear from again.

Jack swallowed. “Anything that isn’t safe for you,” he finished. “We aren’t going to have Vlad over again.”

Vlad was his best friend, but the little hero ghost was more.

Phantom’s jaw went slack for the second time that hour. “What?”

Maddie beamed down at her husband from over Phantom’s head. “We won’t have Vlad over again,” she repeated on his behalf.

Jack nodded. “He tried to hurt you. He’s not coming back here. You’re gonna be safe here, okay, Phantom? Anytime you need somewhere safe to go. You can come here. If you want.” His mouth dried as he finished, his mind finally piecing together what it meant for someone to mean more to him than his best friend did. Lord help him, he’d already started thinking of Phantom as his kid, hadn’t he?

“You call Vlad your best friend,” Phantom objected.

“I’m not gonna stop talking to him,” Jack said, then winced at how that probably sounded to a kid who’d basically been attacked by the man. It was the truth, though. “Sorry, kiddo. But we won’t do it here, I promise you.”

Phantom’s mouth opened and closed on a dozen different discarded words. The next sound he made ended up being a stomach growl instead.

Maddie huffed a laugh. “Jack, you made fudge earlier, didn’t you?” she asked.

“You bet, love!” Jack got to his feet to fetch it. His knees creaked in protest.

“The kitchen smelled amazing when I came in,” Phantom admitted.

Jack gave him a grin. “That’s Fenton fudge for you! Not a thing in this world beats it!”

The ghost laughed, his wispy hair fluttering, Maddie’s arms still wrapped around his shoulders. Jack felt something bloom in his chest. Whenever they finally met Phantom’s family, Jack wouldn’t leave without a joint custody agreement.

That’s my kid, he thought. His kid.

And there wasn’t a thing in the world and the Ghost Zone besides that would keep Jack from taking care of his family.

Chapter Text

Finally, finally, Danny’s mom had forgotten to exit her account on the lab computer before leaving the house.

Danny had been genuinely surprised to realize how good his parents were about logging out whenever they left the computer. When he’d mentioned this to Jazz, she’d told him that their parents had had a fight over their different (if equally incomprehensible) virtual workspace organization methods when Danny had been too young to remember, and they’d since learned to be good about keeping their user accounts separate and private. Danny had begun to wonder if he’d have to break down and ask his parents for copies of his scan results in order to share them with Sam, until this past week had run his parents ragged enough to make their computer habits slip.

Danny found copies of the CT and MRI scans in his mom’s email inbox (it was easier than trying to search through her saved files) and sent them to the printer. Jazz was out with Val, and his parents were covering the regular hour-around-sunset patrol. He’d felt a little guilty asking them to when they were already fixing the home defenses, developing new safety tech for ghosts, starting new jobs, and staying on top of the GIW situation all at the same time, but the media circus had been intense since Operatives O and K’s arrests yesterday morning, and Danny had not felt ready to spend another patrol running from reporters. His mom was far better than he was at brushing off people who felt entitled to her time.

Everything had happened so fast these past three days. Danny’s parents had managed to clear Vlad’s contracts of any worrisome provisions — aside from the massive pay difference between Maddie’s and Jack’s offers, at least — and sign them by the time Danny had come from school on Tuesday, as well as to install a recording device on the home phone. He’d just started working on his homework when the GIW had called again with some new argument about why his parents should cooperate with them. Danny didn’t think he’d ever heard quite so much danger in a voice before; his mom had sounded like she was out for blood.

And somehow O and K had still taken the bait to try to pressure her in person and had driven a not-at-all-discreet van into town less than a day later. They’d been pulled over and arrested within minutes.

Unfortunately, a police reporter had caught the pair on camera yelling about entrapment, even though the Fentons weren’t police officers and the warrants for O’s and K’s arrests had had nothing to do with the Fentons and everything to do with their once leaving bruises on the Mansons’ darling, beautifully vindictive daughter. The resulting video had thrown every reporter interested in the sudden legal standoff between an Illinois town and a government agency into a full-on frenzy. Tucker predicted that the media circus would peter out in a few days, while Sam hoped to drag it out: she’d sent every reporter she could contact details about all of the charges against O and K, convinced that the sheer volume of them would make people who’d never even heard of Amity Park before side against the GIW and that enough public attention would prevent the case from getting dismissed. Danny just wished the media frenzy would end.

At least the legal non-personhood of ghosts meant there was no way he was going to be involved in the trial if the case did make it to court. Honestly, he wasn’t sure what the reporters hoped to gain from talking to him.

Danny pushed his chair back from the computer desk and got up to collect the scan printouts. He would have to wait until school tomorrow to give them to Sam, but he snapped a phone photo of the last MRI image to send to the groupchat once he was finished here. He turned off the printer, clicked the internet browser’s back button several times, and pulled up every other computer application that had been open when he’d first come down to the lab. There. His parents probably wouldn’t notice anything different about the state of the computer. If they did, they would blame it on ghosts as long as Danny didn’t say anything. Technically, they wouldn’t be wrong, he thought, smiling a little.

Danny paused by his mom’s work station as he walked to the stairs. His parents had sectioned off their lab benches into three groups: one that they were both using to modify the house’s ghost defense system sensors, one that his dad was building his GIW-collar-disabling shield at, and a final one where his mom had set up the ecto-drugs that she’d used her shining new authority as Amity Park’s official chief of ghost safety to expropriate from the police after the police had confiscated them from O and K. Danny glanced at his mom’s lab notes. She appeared to be running two sets of tests, one to develop counteragents for the drugs themselves and another to work out a neutralization method for the drugs’ ectophilic binding agent.

Danny looked back at the drug vials. He felt a little surprised to realize he wasn’t the least bit nervous about his mom having them. If he’d ever needed confirmation that his parents wouldn’t hurt him if they knew what he was, surely he had it now.

He knew he should tell them. The idea still made his heart flutter nauseatingly, but even the little internal voice pressing him to tell them no longer sounded like Val or Jazz so much as his own voice. He’d talked strategy with Jazz and had at least a vague idea of what he wanted to say and in what order, but … well, it would probably be kinder to wait until the present chaos died down, anyway. Right?

Danny shook his head to himself and carried the printed scans up to his room.

He opened his phone as he went. Tucker had installed some geeky chat program that met his security standards onto all of their phones, although he’d quickly lost his position as chat admin to Jazz once they’d started using the program in earnest, since the rest of them didn’t agree that messages about new PDA releases should be marked as high-priority. Danny sent the brain MRI picture to the chat. The response was immediate.

Town Menace: [photo attachment]
Scientific PROOF that I still have braincells

Valiant: Why do you never use them, then?

Shade Mistress: Yeah, Danny, you know your muscle breaks down when you don’t maintain it, you should really give your braincells occasional exercise too.

Town Menace: :(

Danny flopped onto his bed, then frowned at his screen, finally noticing what his chat nickname was set as. He and Tucker and Sam had had a whole initials theme going, and “Death Fail” had been good. Jazz should be the only one of them with administrative nickname altering privileges; why had his changed?

Town Menace: Why is my chat name “Town Menace” now

Valiant: Because you are. Do you know how many awful jokes you’ve subjected the good people of Amity Park to?

Town Menace: Jazz?

Jazz’ Breathe: Valerie bribed me with a hoverboard training session if I made the change.

Shade Mistress: “Training session” lol

Jazz’ Breathe: SAM

Valiant: Sam I don’t know or care what you and your boyfriend get up when you go flying together, but Jazz and I have been doing serious aerial combat training.

Too Fine: Aw man what do I have to do to get sky kisses?

Valiant: Go hit on a ghost or something

Too Fine: You make a good suggestion. I am still ghost pharaoh, that’s bound to impress some fine specters.

Town Menace: Tucker if you break up any of the ghost couples and I have to deal with the fallout again, I WILL give Jazz your hype speech to psychoanalyze.

Jazz’ Breathe: “Hype speech”?

Town Menace: Don’t worry about it

Jazz’ Breathe: Tucker, do you need help with a hype speech?

Too Fine: I DO NOT.

Danny chuckled. He would have to find some way to bribe Jazz to change his nickname back; Sam would probably have ideas —

His call device buzzed.

Danny jerked upright and fished the device out of his pocket, almost pressing the answer button before the realization that he’d just been talking to all of his friends stopped him.

It had to be his parents calling. They were on patrol. Danny couldn’t be inside Fentonworks when he turned his location on for them.

He scrambled in his backpack for his Thermos, messaging the chat in the meantime to make sure.

Town Menace: Check in NOW

Shade Mistress: A

Too Fine: A

Valiant: A

Jazz’ Breathe: A

Too Fine: Did your NotiFoley go off? Mine didn’t

Town Menace: Ya

Valiant: CALL IN if you need help

Too Fine: Has to be the Fentons

Shade Mistress: BRING YOUR PHONE WITH YOU

Jazz’ Breathe: Update us as soon as you can!!!

That was the last message Danny read before stuffing the phone in his jeans pocket and transforming.

Danny shot through the window, the call device clutched tight in his hand. When he was two blocks out from home, he answered. “I’m here.”

“Sorry to call you in,” his mom began. Danny abruptly remembered that the last time she’d seen him as Phantom had been on Monday, when he’d spent the latter half of their check-in just dazedly staring into space while she rubbed his shoulders and occasionally prompted him to have more fudge and his dad kept up a stream of outlandish, clearly made-up, but strangely comforting stories about his past standoffs against government lackeys. Danny was doing better now: he’d had time to come to terms with the fact that the sanctuary city laws weren’t as much of a shield as he’d previously believed. There had to be more than just those laws keeping the Guys in White away from Amity Park, and whatever it really was likely hadn’t changed, and two operatives getting arrested the moment they’d entered city limits was hardly going to make the GIW more inclined to visit.

“I’m good,” Danny reassured his mom. “Tell me what’s happening.”

“There’s a … ghost dragon,” Maddie summarized.

Danny bit back a curse. Why did everything have to happen this week? And the same month as final exams? “Guess Aragon’s done laying low,” he muttered.

“Dorathea’s brother is a dragon?”

“Sometimes. Dora, too.” The call device’s map showed his parents’ location as by the river. Danny flipped in midair and started speeding towards them. “Watch out for his tail and his fire; if you get a clear shot at the amulet on his neck, take it.”

“He’s rather high up — I’ll see if I can —”

“I’ll be there in a minute,” Danny promised.

“Phantom, we can handle the dragon for a while, but he damaged the bridge before we drove him back. If there’s anything you can do with your ice …?”

Dread pooled in his stomach. The bridge to Elmerton always had cars on it, no matter the hour of day or night. “On it.”

A few seconds later, the bridge in question entered Danny’s field of vision. He couldn’t see any sagging from this distance, and only small fires, which was a relief. He turned invisible: if he wanted to keep the bridge from suffering further damage, he needed to avoid catching Aragon’s attention until he’d finished icing it.

Danny flew downward, angling towards the tallest flame. He stopped and hovered when he saw the deck. There were car crashes on both sides of the road. None of them looked deadly, thank goodness, but the wreckage had clearly blocked evacuation. He didn’t know how urgent evacuating the bridge was with two of the bridge’s main support piers damaged but no deck sagging, but the risk of leaving people there wasn’t worth it.

Danny pressed the all-call button on his call device as he iced away the blue flames and dove towards the damaged pillars. There wasn’t time to cycle through the individual call options. He could see Aragon and his parents shooting fire and ectoblasts at each other a quarter mile away along the river shore, a pile of spent weapons discarded along the path between where the GAV was parked near the bridge and where his parents stood now.

“What’s the situation?” Valerie demanded over the call device.

“Guys, guys,” Tucker cut in before Danny could answer. His voice was pitched unusually low. “This is an all-call; I set all to mean all.”

Oh. Danny hadn’t realized that his parents’ call device would also be linked in. Well, good: this way they could let everyone know if they needed immediate help.

“Why would you do that?” Sam demanded in a put-on British accent.

Tucker snapped, “Because the bleach-loving bastards are at it again and we need a fast way to get all hands on deck! Speaking of, what are they up to, Clueless One?”

“Why is my codename still —? Nevermind,” Danny cut himself off. He was halfway done shoring up one of the damaged piers with ice. “It’s not them, it’s Aragon. I need someone to evac Elm Street Bridge while we take care of him.”

“Jack and I have got him for now,” his mom put in, firing her blaster again. “It seems to take four shots in the same spot to break through his scales, but we’re making progress on the wing joints. He’s losing altitude.”

The call fell silent save for a quiet, impressed “Damn.” on Valerie’s part. Danny felt a surge of pride. It was always rewarding when other people realized that when the Fentons got serious, they were actually really good at what they did.

Tucker cleared his throat. “I’ll get word out that the bridge is closed to traffic.”

“We’ll take care of evac,” Val put in, presumably meaning herself and Jazz, who had wisely kept quiet while her parents were listening in. “Anyone in immediate danger?”

“Not that I saw. I put out the fires, and I’m shoring up the bridge supports, but my ice won’t last forever.” Danny was making his ice a bit sturdier than normal, but he didn’t have the energy to create that much nevermelt.

“Roger. En route,” Val said brusquely.

“Let me know if there are injuries; I’m in the middle of something but can get there in a few minutes if you need a medic,” Sam put in.

A whoosh and more high-pitched blasts sounded over his parents’ line, followed by a faint, “Ha! Take that, scaly spook! No one makes Fenton Toast but Jack Fenton!”

“Did either of you get burned?” Danny asked anxiously. He finished up with the second support pier as he spoke.

“Nothing that’s gotten through our suits!” his mom answered, her voice laced with battle craze.

“I’ll be there soon,” Danny promised.

“Get off the line if you need to focus,” Val reminded them.

“Right.” Danny clicked his call device off and flew back up to the bridge’s deck level. Only one of the arches had been seriously bent by a swerving vehicle. He spent a few seconds icing in the gaps between that one’s bars, then spot-iced the other arches’ damage and sped off towards the dragon.

The black and purple figure of Aragon tore a flaming tree from the ground to throw at Danny’s parents. The dragon clearly was losing altitude: he usually preferred much higher ground, but with his wings close to out of commission, he must not have enough energy to make the full mass of his dragon form weightless. Maddie and Jack dodged the tree easily, and it struck the river instead, sending up a spray of droplets and steam. Jack pulled the trigger on his current weapon, got no response from it, and discarded it in favor of another gun pulled from who-even-knew-where.

Enough staring uselessly, Danny chided himself. He dropped his invisibility and froze the whole stretch of burning riverfront trees with one burst of ice. Aragon’s attention snapped immediately to him.

“There you are,” Aragon hissed.

“Hiya, princey,” Danny replied with a grin. “How’s it going? You don’t look like you’re doing so hot.”

Predictably, Aragon let loose a torrent of fire at him. Danny met it with a stream of ice and a, “Wow, you need to chill out!”

“Traitor!” Aragon screeched.

“Dude, I’m not even part of the kingdom. Do you need a dictionary?” Danny asked.

A new wave of fire built in Aragon’s maw, then dissipated when an ectoblast hit the back of his neck.

His amulet. Mom’s trying to break the chain. Danny gave her a thumbs-up as Aragon swiveled his head.

“You insolent peasant woman!” Aragon sparked up his fire again, and Danny lunged forward to put a shield up in front of his mom, who’d drawn in close to take her shot.

Blue fire broke against the green shield, bright tongues of flame spraying around the shield’s edges. Danny grit his teeth and held the shield until the fire died. As soon as Aragon petered out, Danny fired narrow ectoblasts at his wing membranes, giving them a few new holes.

Aragon snarled and swiped his claws at Danny. Danny turned intangible, iced the claws as they passed through him, and then iced Aragon’s wing joints for good measure. His mom stepped sideways to fire another close-range blast at the back of Aragon’s amulet chain. The chain was too sturdy for just two ectoblasts to break it, but Danny thought he saw it slacken a little.

Unfortunately, Aragon noticed too. His red eyes narrowed to slits. Steam poured from his nostrils. With one strong wingbeat, he broke through Danny’s ice and propelled himself back into the sky. Danny tore after him.

“She’s got you on the run, huh?” Danny taunted. “I’d say ‘What a peasant surprise,’ except I’m not surprised at all.”

“Low-born wretch!” Aragon screeched — at Danny or at his mom, Danny wasn’t sure. The dragon stilled to a hover, his wings straining, and Danny shot above him and started raining down ectoblasts.

Aragon hissed and flipped over. Danny assumed that was only to hide the weakened part of the amulet chain until a spiked tail struck him in the back.

“Phantom!” his parents both cried from below.

“I’m fine!” Danny yelled through gritted teeth. He latched onto the non-spiky portion of Aragon’s tail to give himself a moment to breathe. The world spun as Aragon dodged a fresh wave of ectoblasts from Danny’s parents.

The wave ended, and Aragon twisted to breathe fire at Danny. Danny let go in time for the fire to only hit Aragon’s own tail.

“Didn’t learn anything from last time, huh?” Danny gibed.

Aragon’s eyes filled with single-minded rage. Danny blinked. Oh, that’s perfect. Keep that up, dragon boy.

Quickly, Danny covered the dragon’s face with ice and sucker-punched him in the snout. Then he dove. Aragon followed right behind him, no doubt already working through the ice. Danny pulled up just above the river and turned so that he faced the shore, putting Aragon’s back to his parents.

The remnants of the ice muzzle dissolved into steam. “You will answer for your trickery!” Aragon shrieked at him, bellowing blue fire.

Danny had the whole length of the river at his back. He didn’t counter the flames, just deflected them or dodged. The gashes in his back stung when he shapeshifted, but he could already feel them healing.

“Did you skip target practice these past few centuries?” Danny jeered. Aragon’s eyes blazed red, and he fired again, paying no mind to anything else. Danny dodged. The flames extinguished in the water behind him. “Are you sure you didn’t lose your crown in a game of darts? I can see how that might leave you feeling blue.” More teal fire. Danny swatted it aside with an ectoshield. “Yeesh, what did the river ever do to you?”

Aragon drew another breath, flames flickering in his maw. A clink sounded from his neck.

Danny darted forward to catch the amulet as it fell. The broken chain smoked from the half-a-dozen-or-so shots his mom had just taken while Aragon was busy paying nothing but Danny any heed. Aragon’s form distorted and shrank.

As Danny closed his hand around the amulet, he heard his dad fire a net launcher. He looked up. His dad had obviously meant to aim at Aragon, but the ectoline net was coming straight at him. Danny tensed, distantly wondering if this might finally convince his dad to just try laser eye surgery or something if he really couldn’t stand the feel of glasses or contact lenses —

The net swerved in midair to avoid Danny and closed over the resolidifying form of Aragon.

Danny blinked. Oh. His parents had been thorough about making their equipment avoid his ectosignature.

“Gotcha!” Jack whooped. He began reeling the net back in as Aragon hissed. Even in humanoid form, the prince’s tongue was noticeably forked.

Danny froze the amulet into an improvised carrying case of ice and clipped it to his belt. He didn’t want to touch it directly for too long. His parents had already had to deal with one ghost dragon today.

His mom smiled at him as he landed beside her on the shore. “That was cleverly played. Well done,” she told him, her voice warm.

Danny stopped. “Oh, um.” He felt his cheeks heat up and turned his face away. He didn’t tend to get compliments on his ghost fighting, for all the work he put into it; he hadn’t realized that even casual praise would make him feel all flushed and tingly. “Uh, you too. That was some really precise shooting.”

“All in a day’s work.” Maddie’s voice softened. “Is your back alright?”

Danny shrugged. “It’ll heal up soon.”

“Do numbing creams do anything for you?”

Danny nodded, and his mom fished a tube of lidocaine cream out of her belt. “They work better if you mix ectoplasm in,” Danny told her, forming a small pool of ectoplasm in his palm.

Maddie uncapped the tube. “What proportions?”

Sam had probably been keeping track of the effectiveness of different mixture proportions. Danny could call her and ask, but he’d rather wrap things up with his parents before reporting in to all his friends. He shrugged. “It doesn’t make much difference.”

His mom nodded. She squeezed a generous dollop of cream onto her glove, then tipped Danny’s hand into her own, mixing the cream and ectoplasm into a swirl with her finger. She frowned. “Do they need energy to bind together?” she asked. “I’ve got my shock sticks —”

“Do not shock yourself. It’ll work fine like this,” Danny told her.

Maddie nodded again and held out the mixture for him to use.

Danny blinked; he’d forgotten that his parents and Phantom hadn’t really established a “treat each other’s injuries” level of trust just yet. “Oh. Uh.” He should probably take care of his back himself, right? If he asked his mom to do it instead, there was every possibility that he would flinch. Or that she would.

His mom smiled gently. “Is it alright if I apply it, then?”

Danny bit his lip and rubbed the back of his neck. “… Yeah,” he quietly agreed.

He turned around at his mom’s gesture and watched his dad tie Aragon’s arms to his sides with more ectoline, looping the line around the outside of the net. The net itself had already been secured to the thickest tree trunk nearby. Aragon spat vitriol and kicked ineffectually at Jack’s legs. Dora would probably appreciate the gift-wrapping, Danny thought.

Danny did his best to think only about what he should suggest Dora do with her wayward brother. Just that, and not about the gentle circles he could feel his mom rubbing into his back before the numbing cream worked its magic, on the way that having his mom comfort and bandage him — just like when his dad had done the same nearly a month ago — made him remember and miss the kid that he’d been back before the portal, the one with such a close, warm, uncomplicated relationship with his parents.

He didn’t cry this time. Things were getting better between them. Even if their relationship would never again be what it once was, they still had each other. Danny could turn to his parents for help again, no matter what kind of help he needed, and that … that counted for more than he could possibly put into words.

His dad tied off the ectoline around Aragon’s arms and reached for his hip. His hand grasped at nothing, and a sheepish expression settled over his face. “Er, Maddie, did you grab a Fenton Thermos from the GAV?”

“No, dear. You said you would get the capture equipment,” Danny’s mom answered evenly, smoothing the last dollop of ectoplasm and numbing cream onto Danny’s back with a final pat.

“Thanks,” Danny told her, softly.

Maddie gently bumped shoulders with him as she stripped off her dirty gloves.

“Oh,” said Jack with a chagrined wince. He studied Aragon. “Hm. Uh …”

“I have one,” Danny volunteered, uncapping and aiming the Thermos in question. Before pushing the button to activate it, though, he hesitated.

Aragon had straightened up and fallen silent. Maybe it was only because Danny was looking for it because of his recent conversations with Dora, but he could see a hint of the brother that Dora had once loved and admired in Aragon’s sharp eyes and held-high chin. Aragon’s room still existed in Dora’s palace, Danny knew. As her lair’s anchor spirit, Dora could easily have erased it, but for all the thousand years of Aragon’s mistreatment, his room was still there.

“Is something the matter?” Danny’s mom asked him.

Danny swallowed, lowering the Thermos, though not taking his finger off of the activation button. “Is it okay if I talk to him first?”

“Gonna try to negotiate with this stubborn bigot?” Jack asked skeptically, giving the ectoline net a shake.

“It’s worked with other stubborn bigots,” Danny answered, then winced when a stricken look crossed his dad’s face. Danny couldn’t quite make himself take it back, though, and soon his dad gave him a rueful smile and made an “all yours” gesture at Aragon.

The two ghosts studied each other. Danny pulled on his scattered lessons in ghost propriety to come up with a respectful way of addressing Aragon that didn’t also delegitimize Dorathea. He settled on, “Aragon of the dragon-blessed.”

“Bastard of the Realms,” Aragon coolly replied.

Danny cocked his head. “Well, that’s a new one.” Did Aragon mean that full ghosts were the children of the Infinite Realms and of some “natural” second thing that didn’t apply to half-ghosts? Sam would have a field day working out the insult’s implications. Danny shook his head and asked, “So, how’s the last year been? Have you started making a new lair yet?”

The composure Aragon had summoned cracked. He shrieked, “The Dragon Kingdom is mine!”

“Yeah, no it’s not. There’re hundreds of ghosts whose home it is. Spend a millennium being a terrible ruler, get deposed.” Danny crossed his arms.

“I made it!” Aragon snarled.

Danny said, “And everyone who came after built it into what it is now. Do you want me to try to break off whatever piece is still mostly yours?” He knew that was possible — Pariah’s Keep had been severed from the Stronghold of the Ancients when Pariah Dark was first imprisoned — but he didn’t know what the process involved. Frostbite could probably point him to someone who did, though.

Aragon hissed, “I want you to give me back my kingdom, peon.”

Danny had been doing this negotiate-with-ghosts thing for a few months now. He liked to think that he’d gotten good at keeping his head and his temper no matter how frustrating the other ghost was. And yet, the sheer number of ways in which Aragon’s demand was insulting evaporated all of Danny’s patience in a second flat.

Danny rose into the air menacingly. “First of all,” he ground out, “I didn’t take your kingdom. I was only there at all because you made the very stupid decision to kidnap one of mine, and I went to get her back. That was all! I didn’t like your sister any more than I liked you at the time, and I didn’t overthrow you! You messed up so badly as an anchor spirit and a ruler that your people and your lair rejected your leadership!

“Second, I don’t have the kingdom now! Dora does, and if you could pull your head out of your dragon hole for long enough to see that she’s her own person with just as many thoughts and feelings as you have, like everyone else, then maybe you would actually understand what’s going on around you for once and wouldn’t be hated by almost every ghost out there! Other ghosts don’t exist to either serve your purposes or antagonize you!” Danny could feel his aura flaring brighter and brighter as he spoke. “And again, I’m not secretly running the kingdom! I don’t have anything to do with it, except as an ally, because Dora’s made up for the trouble she caused before and is actually a person worth working with.

“And thirdly! I. Don’t. Break. My. Word. If you want a backstabbing jerk to help you, go talk to Walker or your own reflection. I won’t betray an ally.”

“You cause change, half-breed,” Aragon snarled back. “Your kind always do. My kingdom was stable before you. Fix your mistake or watch me burn this pathetic protectorate of yours to ash!”

Danny’s finger tensed on the Thermos button, and only a great deal of effort kept him from depressing it. He breathed deep. If he didn’t see this conversation through, Dora would have to do it instead, and he wasn’t about to subject her to that.

“It wasn’t stable,” Danny answered as calmly as he could. His voice sounded flat as a concrete floor. “Your own kingdom — everything you claim you care about — all but died, and you were too stubborn and sure of yourself to see it. Can you at least entertain the notion that your sister is a person and not some thoughtless tool for you or else a pest to be gotten rid of? Because if not, we don’t have anything more to discuss.” He aimed the Thermos again to emphasize his point.

Aragon narrowed his eyes. “And what do you wish to discuss, scullion?”

“What you actually want,” Danny answered promptly. “You can’t be the ruling prince of the Dragon Kingdom anymore —” Aragon opened his mouth, and Danny glared and pushed the Thermos closer to him until he subsided. “That time is over, Aragon. You can’t just have things back the way they were. So what matters more to you, ruling at all or being a, non-ruling, prince in your sister’s kingdom? Because if it was just ruling something, I’m pretty sure you would’ve started a new lair by now or taken me up on having your piece of the old one broken off for you.”

He paused to let Aragon answer, but Aragon didn’t, even when the Thermos was lowered.

Danny swallowed and quietly continued around the ache in his chest, “You’ve done almost everything wrong for the last thousand years, but — Dora’s told me you were someone worth looking up to, once. If you can acknowledge that it was wrong to hurt and belittle and just be generally awful to your sister … I mean, it wouldn’t fix everything, but if you actually mean it and change, you could have your home back someday. She would still be willing to try to make things work. You’re still her family, and maybe that shouldn’t count for anything anymore, after what you’ve done, but … but it does count.”

Danny let his breath out in a trickle and waited.

Aragon eyed him with contempt for a good few seconds. Finally, he hissed, “I will never bow to a usurping girl.”

“Good to know.” Danny sucked the former prince into the Thermos and lowered his arm.

His head throbbed. He wasn’t sure why he felt so defeated; there’d been very little chance that anything he said would sway Aragon anyway, and Dora was honestly better off without her brother. Maybe he’d ask Danielle to deposit Aragon in some far-off corner of the Zone and meanwhile bury Aragon’s amulet in a room’s worth of nevermelt.

Danny shook his head, turned to the side, and found both of his parents staring at him with a weird combination of shock and pity.

He hunched his shoulders. “Uh, negotiating with ghosts normally goes better than that,” he said.

His dad’s expression grew somber. In a sympathetic voice, he asked, “That’s what things are like with your family?”

“What?” Danny blinked back at him. He’d been talking to Aragon about Dora, not himself. Had his part in that conversation sounded too personally grieved from his parents’ point of view? Danny forced out a laugh. “Like they are with Aragon and Dora, you mean? No, not at all. It’s …” How did he even begin to explain how different their situations were? Aragon had hit Dora and demeaned her and treated her like his personal servant, and all that Danny’s parents had done was … shoot him and vilify him and treat him like a lab specimen.

… Oh.

“It’s …” It’s not like that, it’s not that bad, Danny still wanted to protest. The words wouldn’t come. That had been his own frustration and hurt leeching into his argument with Aragon, not just his concern for Dora, hadn’t it? A month ago, Danny knew he would have easily said that Dora’s situation was so much worse than his own that they weren’t even comparable. Now, that felt almost dishonest. Was this what a few weeks of freedom from his parents’ enmity did to his perspective?

“… It’s different,” Danny finished lamely.

His parents just looked at him with so much pitying sadness, and he shook his head, silently cursing. They were going to remember this moment when he eventually told them who he was. He had to say something that would make it better.

“My parents care,” Danny insisted, hoping that his voice sounded less pleading to his mom and dad than it did to him. “They’ve never, they would never knowingly or deliberately hurt me. They aren’t like Aragon at all.”

“But they did hurt you,” his mom guessed.

Danny shook his head. “Not me, their son. Just Phantom.”

His dad looked confused, but his mom just said, quietly and compassionately, “You’re the same.”

Danny winced. Because wasn’t that the horrible catch-22 of it all? He needed his parents to understand that he and Phantom were really the same person when he told them who he was, but as soon as they did understand, they’d have retroactively hurt their own kid. If Danny could have wiped the slate clean between himself and his parents in the process of revealing his identity, he would have told them … well, maybe not that long ago, but at least when they’d stopped trying to run scientific tests on him. But he couldn’t, and he didn’t know if any of them were ready to deal with losing that separation between Phantom and Danny.

“They don’t know that,” Danny said.

Jack’s look of confusion cleared up. “Does that … make it easier to deal with?”

“I mean, yeah.” Danny shrugged helplessly. “It’s just, well, they haven’t historically been fond of ghosts, you know? And I’m just a ghost. Though things have been getting better.” A lot better.

“Is it a religious thing for them?” asked his dad.

Danny couldn’t help but laugh. His parents’ dedication to going after ghosts did rival religious fanaticism at times. “Something like that,” he said.

His mother shook her head. “That doesn’t make it alright that they hurt you,” she told him.

Danny turned away toward the river without answering. Apparently they were having this argument now, and there was no way he could get through it while looking at them.

“Phantom —” his mom began.

“It was self-defense, okay? Or at least they thought it was, at least at first,” Danny interrupted bitterly. Valerie had been the one to point out to him how it looked for Phantom to keep popping up near the Fentons — especially their kids — and near Fentonworks, on top of always sporting Fentonworks gear. He’d made an effort to look a little less like he was stalking his own family since then, but there was only so much he could do.

And aside from that, in all of their tirades against Phantom, the Fentons had been right about one thing: he’d shot first.

“What d’you mean?” asked his dad.

Danny breathed deep. How in the world did he explain the City Hall incident without making it obvious that that was what he was talking about? “There was this … time early on when things got really chaotic and a little dangerous for them. I didn’t make it happen, but I did show up to try and help. I hadn’t talked to them before that, but, heh, did you know ghosts’ voice echoes are something only humans hear?” That had taken him an embarrassingly long time to realize, considering that that aspect of his hearing changed when he switched forms. He’d thought the echo effect was something that ghosts deliberately put on for humans and then dropped when they realized Danny was a ghost, until he’d complained to Sam and Tucker about not being able to do the echo effect himself and they’d looked at him like he was crazy. “I didn’t, back then. I knew I looked different, but I was sure if I just started talking, they would at least recognize enough to hear me out. Obviously that didn’t work, and I just looked like I was there to cause more problems or something.

“But I’d been so sure, and when my parents reacted like that, I thought, ‘Crap, they must be overshadowed.’ Because their reaction wasn’t what I was expecting and I’d been fighting a lot of ghosts recently, right? I know I should’ve thought it through more; I just … didn’t. I just thought there were ghosts overshadowing them and tried to get the ghosts out. But there weren’t.”

Danny wrapped his arms around his chest, staring out at the river. Frickin’ Walker and his frickin’ plan to overshadow everyone but Danny’s parents. Danny should have guessed. His parents had done exactly what they’d been saying they would to ghosts ever since the portal had opened. If anything, the only out-of-character behavior had been their not shooting him the minute he’d appeared.

“How do you get a ghost out of someone without a Specter Deflector?” Jack asked when Danny didn’t continue.

Danny shrugged. “Easiest way is to just go intangible and tackle the ghost out. From a distance, concentrated ectoblasts usually work.”

“Oh, Phantom,” Maddie breathed, sounding so grieved that for a moment, Danny wondered if she’d figured him out. When he looked back at her, though, there wasn’t any extra recognition in her eyes, and she went on to ask, “Did you ever explain what happened?”

“I’ve tried,” Danny answered. That had been almost the entire reason for his letting Action News have a couple of brief interviews this past year. He didn’t like being on live TV, either because being watched by people who he couldn’t see in turn had always intimidated him or because Jazz was right about him still having some hang-ups from the Reality Gauntlet incident.

“They’re not very good at listening, huh?” his dad asked softly.

Danny shrugged his left shoulder. “They manage sometimes.” He tried to look at his parents again and give them a smile, but — yeah, no, meeting their eyes was still too overwhelming right now. He turned back toward the river and swallowed hard. “I wasn’t just saying things have gotten better; they really have. I’m not worried that they’ll react violently if I tell them it’s me, or anything, just …”

“Just that they won’t love you the same,” his dad guessed, voice heavy with the pain of his conclusion.

Danny shook his head vehemently. “Not that either! They really wouldn’t let that change. I know they won’t. I just kind of worry they won’t trust me as much anymore, is all, or they won’t … believe me.”

Jack’s breath whooshed out in a hurt-sounding wheeze. Danny glanced back again, expecting either some attacker or the light of recognition of his dad putting too many pieces together, but he saw neither. Why did his dad look so upset, then? Danny had thought his parents would think of that possible reaction to Phantom’s parents finding out he was their son as a fairly reasonable one, since he was a ghost. Barely a month ago, they’d been warning the whole town never to trust a word a ghost said.

Danny opened his mouth to ask his dad if he was feeling alright, but his dad spoke first.

“I don’t know what to tell you about that one, kiddo,” he said somberly. “That one can hurt.”

Danny just stared at his dad in confusion until his mom said, “You’d never have been able to stop thinking about it if you hadn’t given your parents one last chance, though, Jack.”

“Wait, what?” said Danny, eyes widening.

Jack waved him off. “Eh, it’s nothing you have to worry about, Phantom. I’m alright; haven’t talked to my parents since my daughter was just a baby. And I’m happy now! So things can still work out okay even if it doesn’t get better with your folks; just look at me!” He smiled, and it looked genuine, if a little strained.

“But what happened when Jazz was a baby?” Danny asked without thinking. The most he knew of his paternal grandparents was that they weren’t close with his dad. He got a different (and usually blatantly false) story every time his dad spoke about his childhood, which wasn’t that often to begin with, and Danny had been somewhat under the impression that his paternal grandparents were dead and his dad just wasn’t ready to talk about that. Clearly, it was something else that his dad wasn’t ready to talk about, at least not with his kids.

… Should Danny take back the question?

His dad rubbed the back of his neck. “Nothing too bad! They’d just always wanted me to be more … normal, never believed I’d accomplish much of anything otherwise, never believed it when I did. They thought I’d make a pretty poor father, and since Maddie was still busy with her thesis ‘cause of those stuffy idiots making her do so much extra work for it, my parents thought it’d be better if they … took Jazz off our hands.”

“They what? But you’re a great dad! I mean, your kids both seem to really love you, and they’re healthy and everything.” Aside from Danny’s being half-dead from the basement portal accident, which was admittedly not a ringing endorsement of the Fentons’ parenting skills, so perhaps his grandparents had had a bit of a point, but he couldn’t imagine just not having his dad around for most his life. His dad was the one who made him feel like he could do anything. Maybe he’d be more human if his dad hadn’t raised him and Jazz, but he couldn’t imagine he’d be happier.

“Aww, kiddo.” Jack did that happy sniffle of his. His shoulders relaxed.

Maddie shot Danny a grateful smile and went to lean against her husband.

Jack pressed back against his wife with a content sigh. He cleared his throat. “Sometimes things just don’t work out, Phantom. But, y’know, sometimes they do.”

Danny nodded, turning away to give his parents a moment to be physically affectionate while he didn’t have to watch. The wind had picked up a bit, making small but noticeable waves in the water. He watched them lap at the sandy dirt for a minute or so before he said, “I do want to tell them. At some point.”

He heard his parents finish a kiss and step over to him, settling beside and just behind him on the shore. “Yeah?” asked his mom.

Danny nodded again. Lap, lap, lap, went the waves. “Yeah. I think it’ll go okay.”

“What is it that you’re worried they won’t believe, moonbeam?”

Danny swallowed. “Oh, just the whole thing where I really am their son and I really am a ghost. Like, that me having a pretty human body and my memories doesn’t make all the ghost stuff not count or not mean anything, but also the ghost stuff doesn’t make me not me, so they don’t need to try to get rid of my … uh … more ghostly traits, I’m actually fine like this, I can just be both. Um, both their son and a ghost. They don’t cancel out; I’m just … both.” He hugged himself a bit tighter, aware of the line he was toeing but needing with a sudden desperation to get as close to the line as he could before he chose when to cross, to get some sense of how his parents would react.

His dad all but growled, “We won’t let them.”

Danny blinked. “… Won’t let who what?” he asked, warily.

“No one’s gonna be trying to get rid of any part of you. We’d get you out of there if that’s how things were going. You don’t need to rest in peace if you don’t want to, and you don’t need fixing.”

Oh. Danny leaned back toward his dad without thinking about it. His dad leaned forward until the side of Danny’s back met the side of his dad’s stomach, not exactly a hug, but still support. Support with openness. It felt nice. The numbing cream on his back was beginning to wear off, but his cuts had just about healed.

“What if,” Danny asked quietly, then stopped to swallow. He leaned back a little harder. “What if they’re, you know, completely sure they can make me more human?”

“D’you want that?” his dad asked him.

Some days, I do, Danny thought, but he shook his head no and meant it.

“No more science-ing on you, then,” his dad said sternly, and Danny couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re okay the way you are, kiddo. Doesn’t matter if it’s ‘right’ or not. Who cares?”

“I mean, the government definitely cares.”

His mom said adamantly, “They don’t get to touch a hair on your head. They don’t count.”

Good to know, Danny thought, smiling a little as he imagined O’s and K’s reactions to being so summarily dismissed. “God?” he asked next, mainly to reinforce his parents’ misconception about why Phantom’s family didn’t like ghosts.

His mom gave an exasperated sigh and instantly channeled Aunt Alicia to answer, “The whole point of a God is bein’ humanly unknowable. Ain’t no one who can tell you accurately whether God thinks you’re wrong.” She bit her lip, and her accent returned to normal. “Phantom … do you think your parents would pay any heed to what the world’s leading ectoscientists have to say, if we came with you to tell them?”

“I’d sure hope so,” Danny said dryly. He turned his head to look at his mom. She looked back unwaveringly, despite the glowing green of his eyes. In a smaller voice, he asked, “… What would you say to them?”

His mom smiled. “We’d say, ‘Look, this is the heart and soul of your son. The same one you’ve always known. Even more — you got lucky with him; so much ectoplasm got pulled in at his formation that just about his whole mind carried over, too! But the heart and soul are what make him your son, still, always, even as a ghost. There are differences, and it’s important to try to understand those, but they don’t change who he is, and they don’t make him dangerous to you. There might still be a lot we don’t know about ghosts, but that much we can tell you for sure. If you can keep an open mind and give him the love and respect and trust that your son deserves … then he’s yours. He belongs with you.’” She swallowed, and her voice sharpened. “‘But if you can’t, you might not be getting another chance. Your son may be too forgiving for his own good, but there are a lot of people who won’t stand by and watch him get hurt, not even by you.’”

Danny swallowed hard. His eyes stung. “D’you really believe all that?” he asked.

“Sure do!” his dad put in.

“Well, maybe not that souls are something quantifiable, but otherwise, yes. Those other allies of yours certainly didn’t sound more inclined to stand aside while you’re hurt than we would be. Oh, moonbeam.” His mom’s expression softened, obviously noticing his tears, and she held out her arms to him.

Danny accepted the hug and buried his face in her shoulder. She held him tight, and his dad came up behind him and wrapped his big arms around both of them. They’d called this a “hug burrito” when he and Jazz had been little: one or both of them in the middle, their mom forming the next hug layer, their dad forming the last, each of their parents facing a different side so that the burrito center was enclosed from all angles. Danny hadn’t expected to be encased to this degree, but he didn’t feel any desire to phase away.

Hah, look at that, the Fentons had finally managed to well and truly trap Danny Phantom. In a hug burrito.

“Do you think that will work, telling them that?” his mom asked him gently.

Danny nodded against her, her jumpsuit sliding against his cheek. “Yeah, that’s … pretty much exactly what I want, um, my parents to understand,” he told her. And maybe it shouldn’t have surprised him that his mom had hit the nail on the head: she’d always understood him so well when he’d been younger. His accident had changed that, but maybe that hadn’t been one of the accident’s permanent changes, after all.

“It’s alright if we come with you, whenever you decide to tell them?” his dad checked.

Danny huffed a laugh. “Couldn’t do it without you.”

“Then we’ll be there,” his mom promised. “Whenever you need.”

Danny hummed an acknowledgment. Come to think, would it be easier to tell them starting in ghost form? He’d always imagined doing it the other way, but if he was Phantom initially, then his parents would have some amount of forewarning, already knowing that he was about to reveal who his family was and, from the sound of it, already prepared for Phantom to come haunt their home, at least as a backup plan.

You could just tell them now, then, he thought to himself, and froze. That metaphorical cliff edge that he’d imagined was still a little ways distant felt all too suddenly like it was right under his feet.

“Phantom? Are you okay?” asked his mom.

Danny nodded instinctively, his mind racing. Not yet! Not now, I haven’t even thought through how to tell them as Phantom instead of as Danny yet, I haven’t told my friends that I’m doing it, Sam will actually Thermos me for a week if I don’t give her a heads-up, tonight’s a school night, I have homework due tomorrow — “S-Saturday,” he gasped, reaching for the most immediately obvious compromise as he stared down that cliff edge.

“What’s that?” asked his dad, sounding just as concerned as his wife had.

Danny swallowed and repeated, “Saturday. We.” Ancients, that’s just two days away! But Danny had already said it. Why had he said it? “We can — Are you doing anything Saturday?” he asked hopefully. He was reeling so much that he honestly couldn’t remember whether they had weekend plans.

“No, we can come with you this Saturday,” Maddie told him.

“Great,” Danny said weakly, clinging to his mom like this was the last hug they would ever share. That was very unlikely, but who even knew what factors that neither he nor Jazz had accounted for might come up when he told his parents, and Saturday was so close!

“How far away is your parents’ home?” asked his dad.

Danny shook his head. “Not too far.”

“If it’s more than a couple hours, we can stick around overnight —” his dad went on.

“It’s not more than a couple hours,” Danny interrupted, smiling into his mom’s shoulder despite himself.

Maddie mused, “We should at least leave in the morning to give Jack and me the option to stay for a few hours.”

Danny whined, “Oh man, please not before ten, I want to at least be awake.”

His mom huffed a laugh. “Ten a.m. Saturday, then.”

Not even two days: just one and a half.

A brief whimper escaped Danny’s lips without his meaning it to, and his mom smoothed his hair. “It will be alright, moonbeam,” she soothed.

Danny chuckled nervously. “You promise?”

“Jack and I will do everything in our power to make sure,” she told him seriously.

His dad backed this up with a squeeze.

Danny exhaled slowly, feeling his muscles begin to relax. “Okay.”

The rushing in Danny’s ears faded away. The quieter, repetitive sound of the wind and waves ebbed back in. He still didn’t let go of his parents, and neither did they, all of them basking in the hug burrito’s warmth. Or … not-warmth. “Wait,” Danny asked as the thought occurred to him, “are you sure you aren’t getting too cold?”

Maddie shook her head. “We re-thermalized our jumpsuits and added another temperature regulating layer underneath.”

All of that just so he could … Danny tightened his hug. “You guys are nuts,” he told them, fondness filling every crevice of his being.

“That’s the Fenton way, Phantom!” said Jack.

Glad to know I came by it honestly, thought Danny.

The world around them brightened by a notch, and Danny looked up to see that all the streetlights had just turned on. Dusk was darkening into night. Aaaand he still had homework for tomorrow, great. Did emotionally draining family heart-to-hearts count for homework extensions?

“Oh, it must be getting close to dinnertime,” his mom commented, still without letting go. “Phantom, would you like to join us for dinner? Or we could get you something to go?”

Danny shook his head. His mom sighed, a little disappointed but probably not surprised, since he’d turned down the same offer before.

“I’ve just got some stuff to take care of tonight,” Danny told her. Like telling Dora what had happened with Aragon. He had to let go and get a move on, even if he didn’t want to let go. “I’ll walk you back to your GAV, though,” he offered.

Fortunately, his dad took that for a hint and loosened his grip. Danny and his mom followed suit. They began walking back toward the bridge, which looked far less crowded now from what Danny could see. The ice was still holding, too.

“Good work on the bridge,” Maddie commented, and Danny flushed again (what was with him and being complimented?).

“Thanks,” he said.

Jack collected one of the spent Fenton weapons along the path. “Do you know what you’re going to do with the dragon ghost?” he asked.

Danny shrugged. “I’ll have to talk to Dora. Imprisoning him in her castle probably won’t work. I don’t want to just release him with no other consequences after he deliberately endangered people, but if turning him over to his lair’s authority is out of the question, I don’t really know what other authority would work. He’s not strong enough for the Observants to care, and there’s a good chance Walker would give him a pass for everything.” Since apparently messing with the real world was fine by him if you were doing it to get revenge on Danny and Walker still wouldn’t tell him what his other rules were.

“There are legal systems for ghosts?” asked his mom, and for the first time when it came to questions about ghost society, she sounded curious rather than disbelieving.

Danny made a “so-so” hand gesture and replied, “Eh, calling them ‘legal systems’ is giving them too much credit. There are the Observants, who pretty much do whatever weird manipulations they feel they have to to keep ghosts who are powerful enough to seriously hurt the Realms from actually doing that, and ignore everyone else, and then there are ghosts like Walker who decide to try and enforce some specific set of rules in some specific region, but there’s no real structure or oversight to that. Lairs might have their own rules and punishments that apply when you’re in them. Aside from that, we just fight stuff out, or occasionally ostracize someone who’s done something really egregious.” Where “egregious” mostly meant destroying another ghost down to the core, from what Danny could gather, although breaking Truce multiple years in a row could also do it, and Vlad’s adventures in cloning seemed to have put him on thin ice.

“Ghosts are inherently social, then,” his mom mused.

“There are exceptions, but basically,” Danny agreed.

His dad scratched his neck and asked, “So you work with Walker and these Observants?”

Danny gagged. “Ew. No. I’ll drop off tied-up ghosts outside their lairs if the ghosts have been especially awful and they’re likely to do something about it, but that’s all. Frankly, if you guys ever figure out how to minimize natural portals and how to make the opening mechanism for your portal door invulnerable to tricks and brute force and random accidents, I’d probably stop dealing with them at all. I just want there to be something besides me and my allies stopping the ghosts who really want to hurt people.”

“Wouldn’t it hurt you, too, if the natural portals stopped and our portal door was harder to open?” asked Maddie.

Danny thought for the space of a few steps, then admitted, “Not if you don’t change the material of the door itself. Most ghosts can’t get through that way anyway.”

Jack frowned. “The Die-ode?”

“Yeah.” Danny shot his parents a sideways smile, shoving down his anxiety. Toeing the line, right. “Benefits of having this physical of a body. Or, well, there are other ghosts with physical bodies, but they still need to power their bodies with their cores, whereas I’m … a special case. I can just pull back on all my spectral energy and walk through like a human with an ectobattery in their pocket.”

His mom’s eyes widened. “That’s how you get through ghost shields!”

“Yup. No ghost powers at all. Just a lack of ghost powers,” Danny confirmed with a smirk.

Maddie looked delighted for a moment, and a scientific gleam briefly lit her eyes, but then her smile fell. She cleared her throat. “You aren’t … obligated to tell us things like that if you don’t want to, Phantom. I understand if you’d rather not. We still have a lot of trust to earn.”

Danny shrugged. He supposed the information did tell them how to actually trap him — just overlay a ghost shield on a physical barrier that was thick enough or good enough at absorbing energy to withstand his wail — but he was going to have to explain the half-ghost thing soon anyway. Maybe his parents would even work it out for themselves and save him from having to tell them on Saturday, although the fact that they hadn’t figured it out by this point didn’t give him much hope for that.

“It’s alright,” Danny told them. “You’ve already earned a lot.”

His dad put an affectionate hand on his shoulder.

His mom squinted into the distance before them. “Is that Lance …?”

Danny whipped his head around to peer in the same direction. His mom’s eyes were sharper than his own even with the mild ghostly sensory enhancement, but he could see figures moving toward them from the direction of the bridge, several toting what looked like cameras.

“Great,” Danny muttered. The Action News team sent out to cover the ghost dragon attack must have been waiting for his parents near their abandoned GAV and have spotted them walking back along the shore. A glowing ghost boy was not exactly hard to make out from the distance in the dark. Ordinarily, Danny would have counted on Lance Thunder to get back off the streets as soon as he could, but what better time to try and score an interview than when every news agency in the state, some of which might even be hiring, had their eyes on Amity Park?

His mom chuckled.

“What?” Danny grumbled, squashing the impulse to just fly off. He’d told his parents he would walk them back to the GAV.

“It’s just a little funny to me that you’re shy, Phantom,” his mom told him.

Danny spluttered. “I’m not shy! I’m just not super comfortable talking to people I don’t know when there aren’t, like, obvious rules for what I’m supposed to say!”

His mom just gave him an amused look.

“Doctors Fenton!” Lance Thunder called out, more clearly visible now.

Danny froze. Without a word, his dad gently pushed him behind himself while his mom stepped in front of them both.

“Lance!” his mom called back. “The ghost dragon has been taken care of! But tell everyone they should stay off the bridge until repair crews say it’s safe!”

Lance waited until he and his camera crew were at a more comfortable speaking distance — though still a good eight feet away and without making any attempt to hand her a microphone; Maddie’s “don’t get close to me” stance was magic — before he turned to the videocamera, had his sound guy do something with his equipment, and asked her to repeat herself. She did.

Lance added, “You heard it, folks, the ghost dragon’s been subdued but the Elm Street bridge should be avoided until repairs are complete! Plan your commutes accordingly. And while we’re here: Dr. Fenton, what are your thoughts on the U.S. Attorney’s office’s decision not to dismiss the charges against Operatives O and K?”

Maddie stiffened just slightly. “Jack and I aren’t involved in that case. We weren’t even aware the U.S. Attorney was involved.”

“The case has been removed to federal court,” Lance informed both them and his viewers. “And a federal court prosecuting a case against federal officers is a rare event! Any insight into why that’s happened this time?”

“No,” Danny’s mom said politely but with finality. “As I said, we really aren’t involved in that case at all.” She looked around, probably for a different route to the GAV, but unfortunately their current path had the river on one side and a narrow but dense stretch of trees and then a road on the other.

Lance put in, “We were able to confirm that you spoke with the Amity Park Police Department the day before O’s and K’s arrests.”

Danny sucked in a breath. The last thing he wanted was for his family to end up formally connected to the GIW case. Or for any of his friends to be connected to it, for that matter, although Sam was already involved in every way she could manage.

Jack reached down to take Danny’s hand and squeeze it in comfort.

Maddie said, “We’d had a number of tense phone conversations with the operatives recently, and we weren’t clear on how well they understood that our cooperating with their agency would be illegal. Like it is for all city employees.” Danny wasn’t sure if his mom’s “stern reminder” voice was an unconscious echo of that last GIW phone call or a deliberate message to any other Amity Park employees who might be watching the news. “Jack and I just wanted to make sure that we would have help if they escalated to outright harassment.”

“What’s your response to the operatives’ claim that you lured them here?” Lance asked, still not moving out of their way, because apparently he wanted to make the draining evening that the Fentons had all had last even longer.

Danny felt so done all of a sudden. Forget hiding from the camera crew: if they were going to block the path, Danny had another way out. He stepped towards his mom without letting go of his dad’s hand and reached out his free hand to her as she answered, “I don’t know if they came here intending to see us, but we certainly didn’t invite them. The phone recordings should make that clear.”

Maddie glanced down at Danny’s hand when she finished, then back at him, looking confused and a little concerned. Danny shrugged one shoulder in Lance’s direction while tilting his head, his usual way of communicating, Hey mom, will you back me up if I mess with this guy?

Maddie pursed her lips for a moment but then smiled, nodded, and took his hand. Danny smiled back. One of the non-video camerapeople snapped a picture.

Lance, meanwhile, turned to Danny and excitedly asked, “Phantom! Can I get a statement about what the past few days have looked like on your end?”

Danny smiled at the reporter and leaned forward like he wanted a microphone. Lance stepped closer to oblige, and he waited.

The microphone entered his range. Danny cleared his throat. “No,” he answered, and vanished his parents and himself.

Lance’s resulting flail almost made Danny laugh out loud. He quickly pulled himself and his parents into the air before he could make a noise that gave his position away.

The flight back to the GAV took only a few seconds. Danny set his parents down onto the empty pavement and let go.

Neither of his parents said anything for a moment, and it belatedly occurred to Danny that he should’ve gotten permission before using his ghost powers on them, but before he could apologize, both of his parents burst out laughing.

Danny couldn’t help but follow suit. His dad slapped his back playfully and then leaned a hand against a side door of the GAV, laughing till he wheezed. His mom put one hand over her stomach and wiped tears from the corners of her eyes with the other. She looked idly over their surroundings as she did, stopping when her eyes faced the bridge entrance.

“Jazz?” said his mom, confusion in her voice.

Danny followed her gaze. The bridge itself looked to have been cleared of people. Fenton Caution Tape had been strung across both of the bridge’s entrances, and Jazz stood in the middle of the road in front of the near entrance, wielding an Anti-Creep Stick. Valerie was probably doing similarly at the Elmerton-side entrance. After surviving two years of ghost fights, most Amity Parkers wouldn’t alter their routines just because of a little caution tape.

Danny saw his mom’s eyes fall to the Anti-Creep Stick. More confidently, she said, “That is Jazz. What’s she doing here?”

“Helping with evac,” Danny answered automatically, then stiffened. “Uhh, I mean, that’s what it looks like she’s doing! Red Huntress must have, uh, seen her keeping her head in a ghost crisis and asked her for evac help.”

“That’s my girl!” said Jack, straightening up. He waved enthusiastically.

Jazz broke her staring contest with some commuter who had more determination than sense and waved back. Raising her free hand to cup her mouth, she called, “Have you got the Fenton Foamer?”

That would certainly be one way to block the road until a maintenance crew was able to put up a barrier.

“On it!” their dad whooped back, running to the rear doors of the GAV. He pulled out the Foamer, bounded over to Jazz, and sprayed liberally, coating the road to either side with bright green ecto-foam. The unwise commuter honked his displeasure and finally backed up and turned around.

Jack threw an arm around Jazz’s shoulders as they walked back to the GAV. He wasted no time before regaling her with the highlights of the fight with Aragon. Danny wondered if he sounded like that when he wrote his own reports for the Ghost Getter files. Surely his accounts weren’t quite that bombastic. … Right?

Maddie smiled at the pair as they drew near, although there was a concerned tilt to it. “Jazz, pumpkin, are you alright? Did you get caught on the bridge?”

Jazz blinked. “Nope, wasn’t even near it! I just thought I should help out because I was nearby! I mean … kind of nearby! General area! Not too near! Like I said!”

Their mom’s eyebrows furrowed. “Were you alone? I thought you were out with your g—”

“Just headed home a bit early!” Jazz interrupted.

“Did you sweep the park?” Danny asked with a grin, partly to maintain the pretense that that was a meme about running early, but mostly because it was his solemn sibling obligation to never let Jazz live down the time she’d texted the wrong groupchat about patrol.

Jazz “accidentally” dropped one end of the Anti-Creep Stick so that it swung down and tapped him hard on the knee.

“Ow,” Danny complained.

“Jazz!” and, “Jasmine!” their parents scolded at once.

“Oh, whoops! I’m so sorry, Phantom,” Jazz lied. He returned her sparkling gaze with a flat one, and her expression shifted into seriousness as she added, “Are you okay?”

It was clear at least to Danny that she was asking more about the fight and about whatever had taken place between the time Aragon had gone down and now than about his knee. He relaxed and nodded to her. “I’m okay.”

His dad rubbed his chin in the meantime, studying the glorified baseball bat in Jazz’s hands. “I’m not sure how to make that one avoid you …” he mumbled, and Danny laughed.

“It’s okay,” Danny told him. “I’m really not hurt. You don’t have to try to install a guidance system in a wooden stick.” As amusing as that would be to watch.

“Speaking of gear, though,” Jazz said, patting the Fenton Foamer nestled in the crook of their dad’s elbow, “could you fly this over to V— to the Red Huntress on the other side of the bridge?”

“Sure,” Danny agreed.

Jack handed the Foamer over and asked, with awkward-sounding hopefulness, “Are you sure about dinner, Phantom?”

Danny nodded. “Yeah. Thanks, but I need to go clear my head a little.” And to get the rest of the team up to speed before Sam decided to actually Thermos him. He smiled at his parents and hefted the Foamer. “I’ll drop this back off at Fentonworks once Red’s done with it!”

“Take care, Phantom!” his mom said as he started to float.

“You too,” Danny told his family. They waved goodbye to each other. He shot across the river, smirking at the sight of Lance Thunder hustling back towards the bridge from too far away to make it before his parents took off.

Valerie was already staring at Danny by the time he got close enough to make out her figure in turn. He waved. “I come bearing a traffic barrier!” he called.

“A giant ecto-blaster?” Val asked as he landed beside her.

“A giant ecto-foam blaster,” Danny corrected. He handed said blaster to her and took a step back.

Valerie just looked at him. “Show me how this thing works, ghost nerd. I don’t wanna coat myself in foam.”

“Oh, right.”

Danny explained all the settings as succinctly as he could. They got the Elmerton-side bridge entrance blocked off in short order, and Danny took off before Val could make him give her a report that he would just have to repeat to everyone else.

“Send an update to the group!” Val yelled after him.

The advantage of flying was that Danny made it home well before his parents did. He dropped the Fenton Foamer off in the lab, then phased up to his room, transformed, and took out his phone.

The first text he sent was a quick, “I heard about the ghost dragon. Are you guys alright?” to his parents. Then he took a deep breath and opened up the Ghost Getters chat. A message came in right as he did.

Valiant: I told you to update us, Danny

Danny rolled his eyes, skimmed the other recent messages between his teammates that he’d missed (apparently there hadn’t been any immediately dangerous injuries on the bridge, yay), and dove in.

Town Menace: Not all of us have suits that can integrate our phones, Val

Shade Mistress: Welcome back to the living.

Town Menace: Thanks, I miss being in ghost form already
Anyway
I’ve got Aragon in a Thermos. He wasn’t receptive to negotiations, I’m not sure what to do with him now but considering what he did to the bridge, I won’t feel bad about leaving him in there for a week or two while Dora and I figure it out.

Shade Mistress: When are you planning to talk to Dora?

Town Menace: Tonight or tomorrow? I have to finish that history assignment first

Too Fine: Is that due tomorrow???

Town Menace: Yes

Too Fine: Noooo

Valiant: Back on topic, please, boys

Town Menace: So yeah, I’ve got Aragon’s amulet frozen into an ice thing because my mom was able to sharpshoot it off him. I’ll lock that up separately.

Valiant: I’m still not over the fact that your parents got GOOD

Shade Mistress: You should just destroy the amulet. He deserves it.

Jazz’ Breathe: See, Val? I told you my parents can rise to these occasions.

Town Menace: … I’ll talk to Dora about it. You can come with if you want, Sam

Shade Mistress: I will.

Town Menace: Okay. I have another update though

Danny paused to take a second deep breath and to check whether his parents had responded. They had: his mom assured him that they were alright and asked him what he wanted from the usual Chinese place they were stopping at to grab takeout. He smiled, texted back his order, and returned to the Ghost Getters chat.

Town Menace: So. I’m going to tell my parents on Saturday.

Jazz’ Breathe: Danny!!! I’m so proud of you!!!

Too Fine: Oh wow. Congrats, bro!

Shade Mistress: THIS Saturday? Are you sure you’re ready?

Town Menace: Not entirely, but I already set the date with them

Shade Mistress: … How did you do that?

Town Menace: We were talking about Phantom’s parents and I said that I do want to tell my parents I’m their son and they said they would come with me for that for, like, moral support

Too Fine: LOL

Valiant: Are you kidding me, Fenton?

Shade Mistress: I was about to say the same, but that’s actually pretty on par for him.

Valiant: I hate that you’re right

Shade Mistress: Danny, are you sure your parents will take it well? They were shooting at you less than a month ago.

Town Menace: I think they will. And at this point, it’s a risk I want to take.

Jazz’ Breathe: Good for you, little brother.

Too Fine: And if they DON’T take it well, you’re coming right over to our house and we’re having a party to celebrate you becoming an official Foley! There will be endless nachos. We’ll steal Sam’s Halloween stencils and paint ghosts all over your new bedroom.

Town Menace: Tuck I really don’t think that’ll be necessary
But thanks.
Also I would prefer rocket stencils.

Valiant: I can’t believe you didn’t just tell them when you were all hugging it out last weekend.

Town Menace: It wasn’t the right time!

Valiant: Sure it wasn’t.

Too Fine: Real talk though, PLEASE tell me your reveal is going to involve you handing your parents Mapquest directions to Fentonworks.

Town Menace: Tucker they would genuinely think another family has been living in our house and they just haven’t noticed

Too Fine: Alas, true

Jazz’ Breathe: Are you still planning to use the script we came up with?

Town Menace: No, I’m going to start off in ghost form now so we have to rework it.

Jazz’ Breathe: I’ll free up some time for that tomorrow night!

Too Fine: You guys can come over and do it at my house

Town Menace: Thanks

Too Fine: I have to make sure you work in at LEAST one joke, this setup is too good to waste

Shade Mistress: Tucker, this is a serious decision that’s going to change Danny’s life, not a comedy sketch!

Jazz’ Breathe: It’s okay to joke about serious things when you want to.

Valiant: I’m coming over with popcorn an hour after whatever time you’re supposed to meet your parents, though, so don’t drag it out too long or I WILL consider it a free comedy sketch

Shade Mistress: Guys, stop joking. Danny, remember that no matter what happens, we’ll have your back.

Too Fine: Always, man.

Danny closed his eyes to savor the warmth in his chest, calm for a moment amidst the Aragon- and GIW-induced chaos of this week.

Town Menace: Thanks, guys. I really appreciate it.
That reminds me, though — Sam, did you have anything to do with the US Attorney not dropping the GIW case?

Shade Mistress: Way to change the subject. Why do you ask?

Valiant: Probably because you’re the only one of us rich enough to bribe a government official.

Shade Mistress: I did NOT bribe Attorney Matthews. We just had dinner together a few months ago, along with my parents.

Valiant: Holy crap you actually bribed a government official

Shade Mistress: We had a DISCUSSION. No money changed hands.

Valiant: And how did that dinner happen, rich girl?

Shade Mistress: My parents are happy that I’m “showing interest in a respectable career” and have been trying to help me network

Town Menace: How did you know the case would end up in federal court?? I didn’t even know that until Lance cornered my parents after the fight today

Shade Mistress: GIW agents are federal law enforcement officers, and criminal cases against federal LEOs are almost always removed to federal court under Title 28 section 1442.

Too Fine: Wow I wonder why your parents think you’re going to become a lawyer?

Shade Mistress: Shut up, Tucker
Anyway, I didn’t KNOW they would get arrested; I just figured that if they did, it would probably end up being in Matthews’ jurisdiction because Amity Park is part of it.

Jazz’ Breathe: Thank you for being so on top of this, Sam! Danny, how many orders of spring rolls should I tell our parents to get?

Town Menace: I could eat at least 2 by myself, Aragon got me with his tail spikes earlier

Shade Mistress: WHAT

Town Menace: It’s all healed up!

Shade Mistress: I’m going to convince Dora to punt that sorry excuse for a lizard into Carnivorous Canyon

Sam probably wasn’t serious about that last bit. The protectiveness towards him made him feel all tingly anyway.

Town Menace: I’ll let you know when I’m done with the history homework so we can go.

Jazz’ Breathe: Go do your homework! We’ll be home in a bit.

Danny closed the chat and got out his history textbook.

… On his third attempt to read the same paragraph, he admitted to himself that needing to clear his head might not have just been an excuse for why Phantom couldn’t come to dinner. Danny sighed, stared out his window, and then grabbed his telescope and headed up to the Ops Center roof.

The night wasn’t yet deep enough for good stargazing. Still, Danny could see a few of the brighter stars and planets. He settled down near an antenna and aimed his telescope at Jupiter to see how many of its moons he could spot tonight.

Danny could feel himself physically calming as he looked through the telescope’s eyepiece. There was something profoundly soothing about staring at celestial bodies that were billions of years old, that had existed well before humanity did and would still exist long after they were gone. Whatever happened on Saturday, the stars would remain the same, still heedlessly churning out heat and light and the molecules that new planets would need to form. One way or another, Danny’s life would change, but the universe at large would stay as it was.

And really, Saturday was going to go okay for him. Almost definitely. His family’s adjustment to having his identity out in the open might be hard, but it couldn’t be any more exhausting than dancing around that secret every time he interacted with his parents in either form. In the long run, they would surely be able to make things work as long as they kept trying, and Danny couldn’t imagine a scenario where his parents wouldn’t try.

We can get through this. It’s going to be okay.

“Danny?”

Danny blinked and turned to see his mom poking her head above the Ops Center stairs. As lost as he’d been in the stars and in his thoughts, he hadn’t noticed his parents getting home.

“Hey, mom,” Danny replied. “Dinnertime?”

“In a few minutes. Your father wanted to do a few ghost scans first because we didn’t finish the whole patrol route.” His mom came over and settled down beside Danny on the roof. “Anything good visible tonight?”

Danny levered himself up into a crouch and adjusted the telescope to the wandering gas giant’s new position. “You can see four of Jupiter’s moons pretty clearly — want to take a peek?”

His mom smiled at him. “I’d love to.”

Danny moved back to make room by the eyepiece, and his mom peered through it with a “hmm” of thoughtful contentment. She continued looking at the distant planet for a good minute, which Danny could hardly blame her for.

“It does help get you out of your head, staring at all these bright things so unmoved by anything you could possibly do, doesn’t it?” his mom commented at last.

Danny laughed.

His mom straightened up from the eyepiece and looked at him. “What is it?”

“I was thinking exactly the same thing,” Danny told her. He turned his gaze back to the sky. “What’s been on your mind?”

Maddie sighed. “Just that it … feels somewhat wrong to call myself an ectoscience expert right now, with everything we seem to have gotten wrong about ghosts,” she slowly admitted.

Danny looked down, shrugging uncomfortably. “Experts get proven wrong all the time, you know. Like, there was a paragraph in my bio textbook that our teacher told us has been disproven, and that made it into a textbook like ten years ago.”

“I guess that’s true.” His mom didn’t sound too reassured. He sneaked a glance at her, but her eyes were still on the sky. Quietly, she asked, “What was it like for you and your sister, when you realized some of the things we’d taught you about ghosts were wrong? You both seemed to pick up on that much faster than we did.”

Danny grimaced. “We had some instructive experiences. And … well, it still took a while to really understand that. Or at least it did for me. Jazz figured everything out on her own and didn’t talk to me about it for months.”

His mom chuckled.

Danny sighed. “I think …” he began, then swallowed. “I think the hard part is figuring out how to accept being wrong about some things while still holding onto the things you aren’t wrong about. It’s not all or nothing. I mean, definitely question the other stuff, but you don’t have to throw out everything you know altogether. There’s going to be stuff you’re still right about, mixed in somewhere.”

Like finding out there was one big thing you didn’t know about a person, Danny couldn’t help but add, at least in the privacy of his mind. That doesn’t make everything else you know about them wrong.

His mom stood quietly for a moment. Then she turned to him, smiling in the dark. “That sounded wise, Danny.”

“Don’t expect the wisdom to continue; I only get it in sporadic bursts,” Danny warned her.

She chuckled again. “Well, you are a teenager. Isn’t being a teenager all about having occasional bouts of wisdom surrounded by more foolishness?”

Danny grinned. “Huh, who told you that? Sounds like someone pretty smart.”

“He is,” his mom agreed. “Just like you are, sweetie.”

“Aww, mom.”

She held out her arm, and Danny obliged and leaned against her side. Her arm wrapped around his shoulders. They both looked back at the stars.

“What’s been on your mind?” Maddie asked eventually.

Danny shrugged. “Oh, just … hard stuff I have to do.”

His mom gave him a squeeze. Gently, she told him, “You know you can always ask for help, right? I know you’re strong, Danny, but your father and I like getting chances to support you.”

“Yeah. I know.” He exhaled slowly, then pressed tighter against her side, her speech for Phantom’s parents replaying in his mind. His eyes closed. “I’m really glad you’re my mom.”

“Aww, sweetie!” Maddie leaned over to kiss the top of his head, mussing his hair. “I’m glad you’re my son, too.”

“Dinner!!” Jack called suddenly from the house below, loud enough that Danny and his mom could both hear it, and they blinked at each other in startlement. Then they laughed.

Danny’s head fell against his mom’s shoulder. “Shall we go eat?” she asked him, and when he looked up, he found her eyes still sparkling.

Danny smiled back. “Yeah,” he told her. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Text

Neither Jack nor Maddie had gotten much sleep.

Maddie had told Phantom that she and Jack would do everything they could to make sure today would go well, and they meant to keep that promise. Half of Friday had been spent analyzing and compiling and distilling their research data: the evidence they had for ghosts being complex and intelligent and not intrinsically violent, and the information that anyone who intended to be part of Phantom’s support network needed to know in order to keep him healthy and safe. The other half of the day had been spent even more frenetically, making plans for all the possible outcomes of Phantom’s family reunion.

Maddie had taken charge of the “middle” outcomes, where Phantom’s family was uncertain but not outright antagonistic or else where one or a few of the family members were supportive but the others were not. She had a whole script ready, including suggested lines to offer to any less-immediately-supportive family members, whom she would pull aside while Jack stayed with Phantom and the remainder. Jack had been left to plan around the best- and worst-case scenarios: complete acceptance or complete rejection.

Without question, acceptance was the outcome they were hoping for. … Even if that ended up meaning Phantom didn’t want another family on top of what he already had. If it meant the kid wouldn’t be hurt, wouldn’t lose his connection to the family he loved, then Jack could let go of his desire to bring Phantom all the way into the Fenton fold. Their alliance and their portal meant they would still see each other regularly, after all! Jack and Maddie could content themselves with being the ghost’s cool uncle and aunt if that was all he wanted them to be once he was happily reunited with his first family. If acceptance from his family meant Phantom neither needed nor wanted a closer connection to the Fentons, as Jack feared it might, it would still be the best outcome. It was the outcome the Fentons would work for, hope for, do everything up to and including letting go in order to make come true.

And if it didn’t come true, they were bringing their ghost boy directly home to Fentonworks.

Jack thumbed the folder he was holding. His finger caught on the thicker paper of the final document. Wedged behind all the research summaries and care-and-keeping notes was a simple adoption agreement with as many design embellishments as Jack could fit on the page. Legally, the Fentons had no way to adopt a ghost, but Jack knew from the example of their alliance agreement that non-legally binding documents still meant something to Phantom. Jack had spent an hour writing out everything he wanted to put into a deal that would make the kid their own if things went in that direction today, and then he’d looked the whole thing over and had cut it back down to the basics: a statement of intent and support and belonging, a promise to be there and to listen. Detailed contracts obviously weren’t the Fentons’ strong suit, anyway.

Maddie had given the final product her approval when they’d looked over each other’s work at the end of the day. Jack wished he could have gotten Jazz’s and Danny’s input, too. Jazz was better with words than anyone else in the family, and Danny had this way of making people feel safe, like he could project his protectiveness as something physical. Goodness knows they might need the kids’ powers of reassurance if they had to coax a distraught Phantom into accepting a new family after a shattering of his connection to his current one.

Jack had called both of his kids before he’d set the papers down for the night, but they’d each mentioned being busy when they’d asked if the call was about something important or just a goodnight call, and ultimately, Jack hadn’t wanted to interrupt their respective sleepovers merely for backup planning. If things did go badly with Phantom’s parents today, Jack would call his kids home to help then. They both seemed to get along with Phantom, going by the ghost boy’s decisions to stick around and meme at Jazz when they’d run into her on Thursday and then, based on what Danny had said at dinner, to stargaze with Danny for a short while when he’d dropped off the Fenton Foamer. The kids’ in person support would mean far more than any piece of paper.

“Quarter to ten,” Maddie murmured from the opposite side of the couch, glancing at her watch. She flipped her own folder closed.

Jack rubbed his eyes and drew in a sharp breath to wake himself further. “Right! Let’s do this, Mads!”

His wife smiled at his attempted enthusiasm but shook her head. “It will likely be a few more minutes before he arr—”

There was a knock at the door.

Jack and Maddie blinked at each other, and then Jack bounded up to answer it. He should have let Phantom know that the Fentonworks ghost defenses would be off and he could phase right in, he supposed, as he unlocked the door and pulled it open to greet —

To greet Jazz, apparently.

Jazz looked up from rummaging in her purse. She smiled. “Thanks, Dad! I’ve got my keys in here somewhere, but I stuffed too many other things in on top of them.”

The purse did look almost as full of paper as Jack’s and Maddie’s folders. “Did you forget something?” Jack asked in confusion. He stepped out of the doorway to let Jazz through. His daughter was supposed to be spending the rest of the day and tonight with the same friends as last night, based on what she’d told him Friday morning.

Jazz took the door from him and held it open for a moment longer before shutting it. “Nope,” she told him with a grin.

She looked, oddly, the same way she did when she was about to take a major exam: that mix of nervous, excited, and just the slightest bit manic.

“Jazz, pumpkin? What are you doing here?” Maddie asked, standing up from the couch.

Jazz turned her wide-eyed grin in her mom’s direction. “I’m here for Phantom’s family reunion.”

Jack and Maddie startled, then exchanged a glance. Phantom definitely wouldn’t appreciate a relative stranger psychoanalyzing that event. Maddie cleared her throat and gently said, “Jasmine, it’s a little late for asking Phantom if it’s alright for you to come. He might feel … pressured to agree, with you already here, even if he’s not comfortable with it.”

Jazz had turned around and closed the window blinds — Jack supposed that was smart; they might not return home until after sunset — while her parents were figuring out what to say to her. She turned back at her mom’s words, her grin relaxing into something softer.

“You’re right,” Jazz told them, and her parents shared a sigh of relief that she was backing down so easily, before she added, “I talked to him about it earlier.”

That set both of her parents staring again. This time, Jack recovered faster. “When?”

“Most recently, last night,” Jazz answered with a shrug.

Phantom hadn’t gone on patrol last night. Jazz couldn’t have flagged him down.

“How?” Maddie asked, before Jack could ask the same. Her eyebrows furrowed, and she reached into her jumpsuit pocket. “Did you take our call button when —?” She cut herself off as she found the device in question.

Jazz took a deep breath and smiled wider. From her own pocket, she procured an identical device. “No. I have my own.”

Jack blinked at the call button — the chief means by which Phantom communicated with his allies in a crisis — nestled in his daughter’s palm. What …?

Jazz cocked her head over her tense shoulders. “Phantom did tell you he had other human allies, didn’t he?”

Oh. Oh!

A grin split Jack’s face. Phantom definitely got along well with Jazz, then! And here was Jazz following in her parents’ ghost hunting footsteps, albeit doing everything her own way, as always. “Jazzy! That’s great! For how long?” Jack beamed, wondering whether his daughter and Phantom had already been allies when they’d all run into each other beside the bridge.

Jazz gave him a relieved smile, then frowned in thought and said, “That’s a good question. Do you mean officially or unofficially?”

“What’s the difference?” asked Maddie, looking faintly stunned.

“Well, ‘officially’ would be since he and I actually talked about it,” Jazz explained. Her hands brushed her loose hair back over her shoulders.

“So when …?” asked Maddie.

Jazz said, “Officially, since last May. Unofficially, I’ve been doing what I can to help him since the October before that.”

Jack’s eyes widened. “A year?” Or even a year and a half. Jazz had managed to hide an official alliance with Phantom from them for a year? She hadn’t told them for a year?

Jack’s daughter’s gaze met his own and answered the question in it without either of them speaking: she hadn’t been able to tell them for a year.

The understanding was like an arrow to the chest. Jack hunched. He had never wanted to oppose his own children. If Jazz had told him that that’s what he was doing, though … until very recently, he might not have listened. He hadn’t listened, when she’d tried to talk him around to believing Phantom. Not until he’d seen for himself what his daughter had seen far sooner.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Maddie asked their daughter in a tone more baffled than accusing, for once taking longer to comprehend than her husband did.

Jazz huffed a laugh. “You guys shot a net at me before I had anything to do with ghosts, just on random suspicion. You did get better about things like that afterward, but for a while, it was hard to really be sure you wouldn’t get worse again.”

Jack couldn’t recall ever seeing Maddie look so wounded before. “You thought we would hurt you?” she asked, her voice small.

Jazz pursed her lips. Carefully, she answered, “Not really. Not … like that. And even if you’d tried to, there’s a lot that I wouldn’t accept before resorting to backup plans. But nobody wants to lose their parents over something like this.”

Jack swallowed hard. The words echoed unpleasantly in his mind. “You’d have left,” he surmised.

His daughter nodded without looking at him.

“Oh.” His voice sounded wobbly to his own ears.

Jazz finally gave him an appraising look. “Dad, sit down,” she told him, brusque but nevertheless warm.

Yeah; that sounded like a good idea. Jack nodded and stumbled over to his side of the couch. Maddie followed suit. She reached out a hand for him to take without looking away from their daughter. Jack squeezed it, focusing on the physical contact and slowly steadying himself. When he finally looked up, it was just in time to see his wife’s eyes widen.

“You told Phantom to ally with us,” Maddie said.

The statement seemed to break the stone weight settling in Jack’s stomach down into manageable pieces. Jazz trusted that we would change, he understood. She brought us around to her side in the end. She wanted us here and believed it would happen.

Jazz smiled a little but shook her head, then stopped. She bit the side of her lip. “Mm. Technically, yes, but that was more of a ‘do it now’ thing than a ‘do it, period.’ Phantom wanted to for his own reasons long before that.”

Maddie persisted, “But he wouldn’t have done it if you’d told him not to.” Her shoulders loosened as she spoke.

Jazz looked fondly exasperated. “He might have. He’s very stubborn,” she argued.

Maddie just shook her head with a confident smile and stated, “But you’re just as stubborn. Jazz … thank you. Thank you.”

Jazz looked almost taken aback by that. Her eyes glittered suddenly, and she audibly worked past a lump in her throat to say, “You’re sure about that thank you? Because, to be clear, the past eighteen months have involved a lot of me lying and hiding things from you and, you know, sabotaging you. And the only defense I would give you is that you told us when we got in trouble as kids that you cared less about us doing what you said than about us doing what we believe is right.”

“You did right,” Maddie answered. “We aren’t upset with you, Jazz, of course we aren’t. You did right. I’m so sorry that we made it so hard.”

Jazz swallowed hard.

Jack tried to get up from the couch to hug his daughter, but Jazz shook her head no at him and came over to wedge herself in between her parents. Jack let go of his wife’s hand and threw his newly free arm around his daughter’s shoulders while Maddie rested her own hand on Jazz’s thigh. Jazz leaned against his side.

“That’s our girl,” Jack said proudly, if softly. For all that he wanted to proclaim it loud enough for the whole town to hear, his chest wouldn’t draw in enough air for such a shout, for fear of jostling the little (not so little anymore) girl pressed against it. “The best of both of us and so much more. We got so lucky with her, didn’t we, Mads?”

His wife nodded and squeezed their daughter’s thigh affectionately. “We sure did, Jack.”

Jazz buried her face in her dad’s shoulder like she was trying to hide tears.

“I love you, princess,” Jack told her.

“I love you, too, Daddy,” Jazz answered wetly.

Maddie’s squeeze relaxed, and she leaned closer. “I love you, pumpkin.”

“Love you, Mom.”

Maddie smiled tightly and continued, “I’m so sorry we didn’t listen to you as much as we should have. I’m so sorry you had to work against us for so long when we should have been right by your side from the start. I’m sorry we led you astray about ghosts, and that we didn’t trust you enough —”

“Mom, stop,” Jazz interrupted. Maddie stopped.

Jazz worked to even out her breaths. Her parents waited.

Jazz sat straighter and wiped her face, leaving a composed expression behind. “I get that there’s a lot you want to apologize for. And there’re even some things I want to apologize for, however good my reasons for them might have been. But you’re just making me feel bad bringing all of that up right now. Today’s about reunion and celebration, right?” Jazz paused, and from Maddie’s expression, Jack guessed that both he and his wife had just remembered that Phantom was due to show up any minute. Jazz finished, “There’ll be time to figure out what apologies need to be said and say them after today.”

Jack’s stomach soured at the idea of Jazz apologizing for anything right now. Which, if Jazz felt at all similarly in regards to her parents’ apologies … there were a number that Jack wanted to give her, but he supposed they could wait.

Jack called up a smile for his daughter. “You got it, Jazzy. Hey, when all of this is said and done with Phantom, we should take you out for dinner! We’ve gotta celebrate our little girl getting so smart about ghosts! Where do you want to go?”

Jazz smiled back gratefully. “That sounds fun. We should celebrate all that you’ve done this past month too, you know? I know it isn’t easy to readjust after realizing you’re really wrong about something, but you’ve done really well. I’m proud of you guys.” Jack’s whole chest warmed. He pulled his daughter closer. “So let’s have the restaurant choice be a family decision, huh?”

“Does Danny know about all this?” Maddie asked, her eyebrows furrowed, and Jazz stopped.

Their daughter opened and closed her mouth without a word in between. She cleared her throat. “That’s, um, something you should ask him about,” she told them. “Some things aren’t mine to tell.”

More indications that Danny was involved. Jack wished his son were here too, but Danny would be far more reluctant than Jazz to be present for the difficult discussions this day might have in store. Jack felt a pang of guilt-tinged fondness at a mental image of Jazz telling her little brother that she would have her own hard conversations with their parents first, and he could go second, once they knew how Jazz’s had gone.

“Alright,” Maddie agreed.

Jack swallowed. “Let him know he can talk to us anytime and we won’t get mad, eh Jazzy?”

Jazz smiled at him. “I’m sure he’ll be glad to know that.”

Maddie snapped to get their attention. Her mouth worked, like a question was on her tongue, but her eyes were pointedly on her watch, and she stayed silent for now.

Jack and Jazz both nodded and straightened.

“Are you guys ready?” Jazz asked.

Jack put a hand on his green folder and nodded again.

Maddie took a deep breath and smiled at their daughter. “I’m glad you’re with us, Jazz,” she said.

“Aww, Mom.” Jazz bumped shoulders with her. “I’m glad we’re all here, too. You didn’t answer my question, though.”

Maddie nodded thoughtfully. “I believe I’m ready.”

“Alright!” Jazz clapped her hands together and stared expectantly into the middle distance.

Jack and Maddie both followed her gaze in time to see Phantom step out of thin air.

Jack blinked. Phantom looked both exhausted and spiffed up, in a way that reminded Jack of looking in the mirror the day he’d intended to propose to Maddie. The ghost wasn’t wearing anything unusual, but his suit looked recently washed and his boots gleamed, and his bangs, while still wild, were less all over the place than normal. There were also obvious dark circles under his eyes. When he blinked, his eyes stayed closed just a moment too long.

Jack glanced at Jazz, about to ask how she’d just summoned Phantom, then shut his mouth as he remembered his daughter holding the front door open after coming through it herself, as if to let someone in behind her. Oh.

Maddie looked taken aback for a moment, likely by the same realization about when Phantom had arrived. Then she smiled warmly. “Good morning, moonbeam,” she said. “It looks like your choice in allies is even better than we realized.”

Phantom gave her a tentative smile back. “Eheh. Yeah, I’ve been lucky there.”

“Well.” Maddie moved to stand up but was blocked by her daughter’s suddenly outstretched arm. “Jazz?”

Jazz shook her head. “Not yet, Mom. We should clear up some things first.”

“What things?” Maddie asked, her eyebrows furrowing.

Phantom swallowed. “Just some, like, classification and identification things that might be, uh, helpful to know.”

Jack did his best to shake off the odd sense of foreboding those words left him with.

Maddie cocked her head, her interest clearly piqued. She settled back onto the couch. “Well, we’re always happy to talk science. But — you know you don’t owe that to us, right?” she asked, her voice soft.

Phantom’s shoulders relaxed a little. “Right. Yeah. But there’s something I want to explain before, uh. Before.”

Jack frowned. “Something you want your parents to know?”

“Exactly,” Phantom agreed, nodding.

Jack nodded in turn and focused his attention as best he could so that he would be able to relay the information to Phantom’s parents.

“Okay. So,” Phantom began, then glanced up at them and faltered. In the corner of his vision, Jack saw Jazz beckon the ghost towards the free living room chair, but Phantom shook his head. Much like Jack, he seemed to manage his jitters more easily while standing. He shifted to his other foot, took a deep breath, and forged on. “So. You know how I’m sort of a special case for ghosts? Not in terms of complexity or anything, but, like, in terms of my relationship to my, uh, form? Body?”

Jack and Maddie both nodded. Jack remembered Phantom’s explanation for how he passed through ghost shields. Not to mention the nearly human physicality that carried down to his microscopic samples in ways the Fentons had yet to see in any other ghosts, although they’d chalked that up to their not having sampled enough ghosts yet.

Phantom looked up to gauge their reactions, then to the side. “Yeah, so, uh, the reason for that is, I’m a … I’m actually … I’m a half-ghost.” His voice was so quiet by the end that Jack could barely hear it.

Maddie blinked. “A what?”

More firmly, Phantom repeated, “A half-ghost. At least, that’s what other ghosts call me. ‘Half-ghost,’ ‘halfa,’ ‘half-breed’ if you’re Aragon, although I’m not really sure why he chose that one. It’s not like one of my parents was a ghost.”

Jack winced in sympathy. Being singled out by other ghosts couldn’t be fun, especially if Aragon’s attitude about it wasn’t just a personal quirk.

Maddie’s eyebrows furrowed. “Do you know why they call you that?”

“Well.” Phantom crossed his arms, looked down at the bar they formed over his chest, and swallowed. “It’s because I … didn’t quite die.”

Jack’s mouth dropped open. “The kid you came from’s still alive out there?” That made so much sense in terms of why Phantom’s parents hadn’t recognized him! Ectoscientifically, though, it made no sense at all. A human being’s emotions never completely separated from their life force — that was what made ghosts that feasted on living humans’ emotions so dangerous — and the full energetic impression needed to form a new ghost core wouldn’t detach from a human body, even right next to a portal, while that body had even a hint of life left in it. Or was that yet another ectoscience principle that Phantom disproved?

The ghost (half-ghost?) opened and closed his mouth without a sound. He blinked. “Well, technically?”

Maddie leaned forward, her gaze sharp, and softly quoted, “‘They don’t cancel out.’” Phantom’s head snapped to her. She swallowed and met his eyes. “You said you’re both. ‘Just both.’ Moonbeam … that’s your body, isn’t it? Not one that you formed later on?”

Jack frowned, not following, but Phantom gave a brief smile of agreement.

Phantom answered, “Yeah; it’s just full of ectoplasm now on top of everything else. But it’s still, I’m still alive. I didn’t die all the way. Just … enough to make a core.”

Jack’s eyes widened with understanding. “Half ghost. Half human.” Not two separate versions of the same boy: one boy who was, somehow, both alive and a ghost.

Phantom nodded.

Maddie’s hands reached for a notebook that wasn’t there. She clasped them together to still them. “That’s why every test on you looks — but how in the world did your core bind to your body? The energy that would take —” She cut herself off abruptly with a strangled sound, and Jack followed her gaze to Phantom’s left arm. The electrical scar.

The scar wasn’t visible from beneath Phantom’s suit, but it shone bright in Jack’s memory. Green, like it marked the path where the most ectoplasm had bonded to the dying child’s body, because that’s exactly what had happened, ectoplasm following where electricity led. The amount of energy needed to bind so much ectoplasm and physical matter together at once would kill a human — but would not destroy a ghost. So if, despite the seeming impossibility, a body changed from human to ghost mid-electrocution …

Mid-electrocution. Jack wanted to throw up.

From the look Maddie shared with him, she wasn’t feeling much better.

Apparently not quite following their train of thought (hopefully not quite following their train of thought; Phantom didn’t need to be reminded any further of the moment he’d become what he was), Phantom swallowed and said, “I know that’s hard to believe —”

“We believe you,” Jack told him instantly, fiercely. Even if the evidence hadn’t pointed that way — and it did; so much of what the Fentons had heard and seen fell into place with that new framing — Phantom knew his own experiences far better than even the best-informed scientists could. Jack would not let this be how he lost his ghost boy’s trust. “You don’t have to prove a thing to us, kiddo. We believe you.”

The tension in Phantom’s shoulders eased. His eyes remained worried and his arms remained crossed, but at least the statement of trust seemed to hit home.

Jack was more than half-tempted to get up and hug the kid, if only Phantom looked open to that right now. The memory of Phantom breaking down at being told he belonged burned in Jack’s mind. How lonely must it feel to be caught between two worlds, needing both, always considered something other by a portion of each one’s population? Phantom had mentioned before that he took in sustenance from both sides of the portal. Jack hadn’t realized that that might be obligatory at a deeper level than just maintaining his preferred form. Phantom couldn’t simply change what he was: the last time he’d tried, he’d said, he’d split himself in half. No, wait, I’m getting my memories confused —

“Just to be clear,” Jazz spoke up in a ‘drop everything and pay attention to me’ tone of voice that Jack obeyed by reflex, “all of this is private information that you won’t be sharing with anyone without Phantom’s express permission. No research papers that mention human-ghost hybrids even as a possibility, no using this as an argument when people say things about Phantom that you don’t agree with, no talking about it when there’s a chance that someone who doesn’t know could overhear. Keeping this under wraps for now is important.”

The severity in her voice combined with Jack’s overactive imagination to conjure a vision of some mad scientist trying to turn people into half-ghosts. Jack wanted to dismiss that as a fantastical villain plot that would only appear in an episode of Ghost Escapades or the like, but … it was possible to build your own Ghost Zone portal, electricity was cheap, and there were a lot of people who were willing to abandon scruples in exchange for power. Phantom was an immensely powerful ghost and hadn’t even needed the decades to centuries of development that most ghosts would to end up that way. Because his core doesn’t need to expend so much power maintaining his body when his body maintains itself, Jack thought, more and more pieces clicking into place. Or because the life still in him amplifies his emotions in some way, or because the dual nature makes it easier for him to adapt or to cross portals … A recipe for making more people like Phantom could spell disaster. A good reason for Phantom’s keeping that close to his chest, indeed.

And the Fentons had coerced him into test after test, digging ever closer to that exact secret.

Jack cast a queasy glance across at his daughter and wife. Jazz looked stern but unconcerned. Maddie looked … pale.

“The Guys in White that are after you,” Maddie breathed.

Phantom grimaced. “Yeah, the gleaming goons really don’t like ghost stuff and human stuff mixing like this,” he told them.

Jack’s heart all but stopped. “They know?!”

Phantom shook his head. “Not anymore. But the, uh, ghost magic thing that made them all forget isn’t going to happen again, so I would prefer they not get wind of it again.” His voice was light enough that if you weren’t listening closely, you could almost miss the tremor in it.

Jack tamped down the hysteria trying to rise within him as best he could. This day was starting to feel more like a dream than reality. A good dream or a bad dream? flitted nonsensically through his mind. Jazz is a close ally of Phantom’s and Phantom still has a life he can live, two tallies for good; Jazz couldn’t tell us that for an entire year and Phantom will become the GIW’s number one target if they ever find out he’s a half-ghost again, which our own research might have told them if we hadn’t stopped in time, two tallies for bad … Jack squeezed his eyes shut and blinked a few times. How many more revelations did this day have in store? Jack should have slept more.

“They won’t,” Maddie insisted grimly, her hands balled into fists. She bit her lip, apparently debating whether to say more, and at last, reluctantly, added, “Are you sure you want your parents to know?”

Phantom gave the two of them one of those smiles that could have melted a glacier with its warmth. “Yeah,” he said fondly. “I trust my parents.”

“Okay,” Maddie softly acquiesced. She nodded.

“So?” Jazz prompted, leaning forward in eager anticipation.

“Right. So.” Phantom took a deep breath. “My parents.” He took another deep breath, opened his mouth for a third time, and — stammered wordlessly. His next breath was shorter. The next, even more so.

“Phantom?” Maddie asked, concerned, as the silence and increasingly rapid breathing continued. There was no reply save for Phantom clutching weakly at his middle.

Worry stabbed through Jack’s chest. He’d never seen this before, not in a ghost. Half-ghost, Jack reminded himself. Did Phantom’s gesture mean that his core hurt, or his stomach? Was there any way to tell?

“Phantom, hey, look at me, you’re okay, deep breaths,” Maddie coaxed.

Still no response. A tremor ran through the glowing boy, and his eyes began to look glazed.

“Kiddo? Do you want some ecto-dejecto?” Jack asked hurriedly. Phantom looked more like he had too much energy than too little, so Jack didn’t know if ecto-dejecto would help and didn’t want to try it unless Phantom thought it would. Phantom seemed to note the offer, but he didn’t reply. Jack swallowed. “Just nod or shake your head,” he tried, to no avail.

Maddie said, “It’s okay, moonbeam, you’re okay, you don’t have to tell anyone anything, just try to count for a few seconds when you breathe in and out, okay? One, two …” She stopped when Phantom stilled and blinked at something to her left.

Jack followed his gaze. Jazz had both of her hands out in front of her and was shaking them fast, palms out.

Phantom’s expression turned baffled. “Jazz hands?” he asked, his voice airy.

“There we go,” Jazz muttered as if to herself, smiling in relief and triumph. She put her hands down, turned to her parents, and sagely told them, “You see, he can never resist bad puns.”

“Wha— yes I can! I only ever tell good ones! You’re the one whose banter needs work!” Phantom protested, his former trembling gone in the wake of his puzzlement and affrontedness.

Jack’s shoulders drooped in relief.

“And yet,” Jazz replied.

“That one was on your hands,” Phantom retorted, then stopped at the sound of his own words and dragged a hand down his face while Jazz grinned.

Maddie gave him a brief smile of amusement. Then she cleared her throat. “Moonbeam?” she asked, softly.

Phantom met her eyes. He looked tired once again, his movements sagging.

Maddie said, “You know it’s alright if you don’t want to do this today, right? You don’t have to do it at all if you don’t want to, although I think it might be good for you to. You don’t owe it to anyone else. And no matter what happens, we’ll be there for you.” Phantom’s expression turned sad, like he didn’t quite believe that, or else didn’t believe it would help anything. “I promise,” Maddie insisted. “You’re always welcome here. If, if your family doesn’t take things well … ours is always open, okay?” she finished, her voice quiet and hopeful and sincere.

Phantom’s eyes widened. “Wait, you actually …” Maddie and Jack both nodded, Jack’s hand tightening on the edge of his folder. Phantom stared, then bit his lip on one side while the other side twitched upward. He almost looked like he was trying not to laugh underneath the nervousness and nigh-disbelieving wonder. “So you’re saying if my parents don’t want me as their son, you do?”

Jack didn’t dare speak — he knew that his voice had a way of breaking fragile moments — but he tried to put as much feeling as he possibly could into his nod. Maddie likely did the same. Phantom met each of their eyes in turn, then Jazz’s, lingering there for a long and communicative moment that Jack couldn’t make sense of. It ended with Phantom giving Jazz the tiniest of nods.

Phantom let out a long, slow breath and dropped his hands. A bright light sprung up around his center. Jack jerked back against the couch, but neither Jazz nor Phantom himself looked alarmed by this development, and the light quickly settled into a stable ring that extended half a foot out around Phantom’s waist. Phantom smirked at them. “Well,” he began as the ring of light split into two, and continued speaking while one ring traveled up and the other down, his appearance — even his voice, when the top ring passed his throat — changing into solid edges and new colors and a firmer sound, “hate to break it to you, but that is a little contradictory.”

The rings fizzled out. A rather familiar human boy stood in their wake.

“I can just pull back on all my spectral energy,” Phantom had told them once, “and walk through ghost shields like a human.”

Jack gaped. Of course.

There weren’t that many part-ectoplasmic, engineering-savvy, space-loving protectors in this world, now were there? And only one so dearly precious. Only one who could have burrowed that deep into Jack’s heart.

“Danny,” Jack breathed.

“Danny?” Maddie echoed, eyes wide and unblinking.

The teenager before them shuffled his feet, an intimately recognizable Holy crap, did I really just do that? expression taking over his face. “Hey Mom, hey Dad,” he said, his hand rising to the back of his neck in Danny’s usual nervous tic. In Phantom’s usual nervous tic, Jack realized, casting his memory back. Their gestures were all the same. “So … I’ve kind of been half-ghost for the past twenty-two months?”

Half-ghost. Half-Phantom, specifically. Or all Phantom, Jack supposed, his thoughts breaking slowly through the fog of surreality: two halves of the same whole. Danny — their Danny, Danny Fenton, was —

“Ha!” Jack laughed aloud. He couldn’t help it, even if it made his son’s eyes flick anxiously towards him. “‘Danny Phantom!’ I get it! That’s a great one, son!”

Danny’s shoulders fell a noticeable fraction, and his eyes brightened. “Yeah?”

“It’s brilliant!” Jack affirmed. Without turning his head, he went on, “Maddie! Look at that, the best ghost hunter in Amity Park is our son!” Theirs, theirs, he was theirs, all theirs. Jack grinned so wide it ached.

The nervousness in Danny’s smile began to seep away. “Well,” he told them, “I did learn from the best.”

Jack’s eyes watered. Just a little, just a bit. There was too much emotion in his chest right now, was all. My son, mine. My amazing son.

“You sure did, kiddo. That’s my boy, the best one anyone could ask for!” Jack sniffled proudly, and he stood up and opened his arms wide, because the couch could only fit three of them and that simply wouldn’t do.

Danny flew into Jack’s arms so fast that Jack had to check whether Danny’s feet were still on the floor to know it wasn’t literal flying. Some degree of weightlessness had still been involved, he suspected.

The collision seemed to jar the two half-complete mental pictures that had begun to overlay each other together with a click Jack could almost hear. The moments when Phantom would forget himself and open up to Jack and Maddie like they’d been close for years, and the moments when Danny would remember himself and close up in the middle of what had before been easy conversation. Phantom’s nervousness whenever they talked about his human family, and Danny’s discomfort whenever they talked about ghosts. Phantom wrestling over whether to confide his identity to his parents, and Danny letting on hint by hint that there was something he was working up to telling his parents about. Of course Jack’s instincts had kept telling him to trust the ghost kid. Of course Jack had felt like Phantom was meant to be part of their family: he always had been their son.

Every gap in each of the two mental pictures was neatly filled in by a piece of the other. The unified image was both wonderfully bright and … horrifically dark, in places. In many places. Every last thing that had happened to Phantom had happened to Danny. Jack tensed at the realization, but when Danny tensed in response, Jack relaxed again easily enough. This was the sort of revelation that would have hit him like a door blasted off its hinges or sunk him like an anchor if Danny hadn’t been pressed tight against him as it struck, Jack could tell, but Danny was here, warm and real against Jack’s side, tangibly safe and whole and home. Buoyed by his son’s presence, the horrifying parts of Jack’s new understanding arrived more like a door creaking open inch by inch, sank into him as softly as a leaky helium balloon.

Jack wrapped his left arm tighter around his son and held his other arm out for his daughter and wife.

Jazz was the next to join the hug, since she was closer and not stunned into sluggishness. How long had she known, Jack wondered? Since last May? Since the October before that? How many of the times it had felt to Jack like his kids were having a completely different conversation than the one he was hearing had been because they were?

Jazz bumped Danny’s arm as she settled beside him. “Proud of you, little brother,” she murmured.

Danny hummed appreciatively and shifted closer to her.

Maddie’s own first touch, a brush of fingers along her son’s shoulders, was far more hesitant, like she wasn’t sure whether she would find him solid. He was solid, though, all the way to the edges. Solid and breathing and here, nestled between his parents and sister, exactly where he should be. Not a trace of physical ghostliness remained in this form — aside from the way that he’d kept setting off their ghost detectors, Jack supposed, which they clearly should have thought more deeply about.

Maddie’s hands settled around her son’s shoulders and began kneading the remaining tension out of them. Her eyes held that odd mix of distance and focus that Jack knew meant she had a thousand things she wanted to say at once and couldn’t figure out where to begin. Usually, when that happened, she stayed silent until she’d had time to sort through all her thoughts. This time, though, her little boy glanced back at her, responding to her touch with a hint of desperation, and it didn’t take a professional people reader to know that silence wouldn’t cut it.

Maddie closed her eyes and leaned down to kiss her son’s hair. “Danny,” she said as reverently as if it were the name of an angel she was beholding. “I love you so much. You’re my son no matter what, and I know there’s a lot that I don’t understand yet, but I’m so glad you’re here. We’re going to do better by you, I promise.”

Jack recognized the words as ones Maddie had written out as a suggestion to offer to any family members of Phantom’s who didn’t know what to say. It hit Jack, then, that not only had Phantom always been their son, but they had always been his parents. Everything that Phantom had said to them about his family, every word of pain and every word of love, had been about them.

And everything that Jack thought Phantom’s parents ought to do was now left to him and Maddie.

Danny twisted in Jack’s arms to press closer to his mom. His cheek smushed against her shoulder. “I love you guys, too,” he said. He swallowed hard. “I’m sorry for not telling you for so long and —”

“No, sweetheart,” Maddie interrupted him firmly, though her voice was beginning to sound strained. “You don’t have to apologize for that. It’s, the things we said and did, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry we hurt you. I’m so sorry we, we pushed you away, and made you so afraid to tell us about this.” She swallowed. Her eyes sparkled tellingly.

Danny winced and shook his head as Maddie drew breath to say more, and Jack opened his mouth to add his own piece (he was going to have to pull that creaky door to horrifying realizations wide open, wasn’t he), but Jazz stopped them all with a stern, “Hey, what did I say about not letting today become a torrent of apologies?”

“But Jazz —” Jack protested. Apologizing was the top thing Phantom’s parents needed to do; he and Maddie had worked that out yesterday, as part of their assessment criteria for how well the family reunion was going. Well, okay, it was actually the fourth thing, after making sure the kid knew that they loved him and accepted him as he was and always had a place in their home for him, but still. Jack didn’t want to risk leaving important things unsaid. Not today.

“We have all summer,” Jazz cut him off. “I mean, we have even longer than that, but I’ve worked out a schedule for the summer, and we’ll be able to get through everything in the next few months. Not everything needs to be hashed out today.”

Danny stopped shaking his head for long enough to give his sister a look and say, “Jazz, you did not go and make an actual calendar.”

“Of course I did, Danny. We talked about this,” Jazz replied.

“When did we talk about this? I don’t remember discussing anything schedule-y except for setting some topics as off-limits until after finals —”

“Right! But we won’t want to introduce all of the restricted topics at once, so I’m spacing each of them out by a few weeks. Plus, we’ll need to redistribute team responsibilities before I leave for college and make sure Mom and Dad are up to date on everything.” Jazz smiled.

Danny groaned, though it was half-hearted. “I swear,” he said, “all of this is not as formal as she’s making it out to be.”

Jack blinked. “… ‘Restricted topics?’”

“Um.” Danny’s shoulders tightened again. “I, I’m not trying to keep any more secrets, I promise, but I know you guys probably have a million questions now, but finals are coming up and I really need time to study, so Jazz and I thought maybe the … harder topics could wait until summer? If that’s okay?”

Harder topics. A hundred old moments of antagonism between the Fentons and Phantom flashed through Jack’s mind at once. They were in for some uncomfortable family discussions, weren’t they?

Maddie’s face looked as drained of blood as Jack’s felt. She stuttered out, “Danny, if we, if you’re being hurt because, if it’s something we can fix, in the home or, or, we do need to know right away.”

Danny shook his head vehemently. “Nothing like that! Nothing that’s happening now. Just stuff like what exactly happened with Pariah Dark or Freakshow or Undergrowth or, uh, well, Jazz made a list for you.”

Jack shivered.

The tears that Maddie had been keeping trapped in her eyes finally fell. “Oh, my baby,” she breathed, and Jack’s heart clenched in recollected worry, because his wife sounded exactly like she had on every occasion they’d taken Danny to the ER: that playground fall that had left him with a broken arm, the panic attack he’d had at thirteen that they’d all feared was something worse, the … the portal accident.

The portal accident. Their son had died — half-died — died enough to become a ghost — in the basement of their own home.

Well, there went another block or two from the Jenga tower of Jack’s emotional equilibrium.

Maddie tightened her arms, pulling herself and her son closer together. Danny looked up at her tears in alarm.

“Mom? Mom, I’m okay, really,” Danny reassured her.

“I know, sweetheart, I know. Oh, you’ve been through so much.” She moved her hands up from her son’s back and shoulders to his face, cupping it and brushing her thumbs across the lines of his cheekbones. A smile broke through her tears. “And you’ve handled it so well. I’m so proud of you, Danny. This town couldn’t ask for a better protector. And we couldn’t ask for a better son.”

Danny gasped wetly, and then he was crying in earnest. He pulled his face free and dragged an arm away from Jack to wipe at his cheeks. Jack let him, setting his own hand on his son’s head as he did, flexing his fingers through Danny’s hair again and again in comfort.

“‘M not upset,” Danny clarified weakly, not seeming to have any success at curbing his crying.

“Okay,” Maddie responded, voice steady despite her own tears. Her hands hovered uncertainly near his shoulders. “It’s okay, sweetie. Feel whatever you need to.”

Danny repeated, “I’m not upset. I just … I …”

Danny didn’t finish, but Jack thought he understood. “He tries so hard to make you guys proud,” Jazz had told him. They didn’t tell Danny nearly often enough that he’d succeeded, did they? Not in between expressing their disappointment and concern about his breaking curfew (… because a ghost patrol had run long) or cutting class (because a ghost had shown up near his school again and he’d gone to take care of it) or always seeming so exhausted (Phantom did night patrols) or spending so little time at home (they’d tried over and over to keep Phantom out of Fentonworks).

Jack swallowed hard. Yeah, they had a lot to make up for.

And despite everything, Danny was giving them the chance to do exactly that. “We’ve got the most amazing kids, don’t we, Maddie?” Jack said.

His wife nodded to him. “We do,” she agreed, warmly. “I don’t know how we ever got this lucky.”

Jazz sniffled and caught her dad’s eye, no longer pretending she wasn’t crying too. Jack hugged her tighter. “They’re so smart and talented and good and I’m so proud of both of them,” he said, and if his voice cracked a little, well, who’s to say he wasn’t just trying to match with the rest of his tear-struck family?

Danny gave up on drying his face and made a grab at each of his parents, like he wanted them even closer to him. Maddie’s hovering hands lost their hesitation. She wrapped one arm around each of her kids and squeezed for all her worth.

“So am I,” she concurred.

Those were the last real words anyone managed for a while. Danny kept crying like two years’ worth of buried emotions were all coming loose at once, and the rest of his family hugged each other as closely as they could, with him pressed so tight between them all that Jack might have worried about Danny’s ability to breathe (despite Danny’s lack of protest about his position) if it hadn’t been for his likely reduced reliance on oxygen.

The Fentons were a stubborn family, after all, Jack thought. Two years of strife had nothing on their determination to never give up on each other.

Slowly, Danny cried himself out. He made no move to break free when his breath finally stopped hitching, instead leaning his head against Jack’s chest with a sigh. “I’m starting to worry that crying-jag group hugs are becoming a tradition for us,” he joked.

Maddie chuckled and nuzzled his hair with her nose. “I wouldn’t mind it if they do,” she told him.

“It’s a very healthy way to process emotions,” Jazz agreed.

With clear facetiousness, Danny argued, “Nah, processing emotions is what beating up the Box Ghost is for.”

Jazz sighed in fond exasperation. “It is not, you doof.”

“Is that the Cardboard Creep?” asked Jack.

Danny gave him an exaggerated groan and finally wiggled free enough to gesture. “He’s called the Box Ghost. He literally shouts ‘I am the Box Ghost!’ every time he shows up. Please don’t make up names for ghosts who already have their own; ‘Invis-O-Bill’ still haunts me,” he complained with enough of a glimmer in his eye to make plain that he was mostly joking.

Jack snorted.

Maddie, one hand still on her son’s shoulder despite the hug’s breaking up, started to guide him towards the couch to sit. Danny’s energy was flagging again, Jack belatedly noticed. He probably hadn’t gotten any more sleep than his parents had last night.

Jack took the opposite half of the couch. Maddie bit her lip with a glance towards their daughter — there really wasn’t room for four on the couch if Jack was one of them — but Jazz smiled and waved her off before sitting down in the adjacent lounge chair. She pulled her phone out of her pocket as she did.

Danny flopped against the back of the couch between his parents. Maddie gave him a sympathetic glance before returning her gaze to Jazz. “Who are you texting?” she asked.

“Ghost Getter groupchat,” Jazz replied with a smile. “Just giving everyone an update.”

“Who is ‘everyone?’” Jack asked without stopping to wonder whether only his kids meant to do identity reveals today.

Evidently it wasn’t just his kids, because Jazz replied easily, “Sam and Tucker and the Red Huntress. Who’s also my girlfriend.”

“Oh, you guys are actually dating now?” Danny asked, at the same time that Jack asked, “Valerie?”

Danny blinked at Jack in confusion, then swung back towards Jazz. “Wait, you told Dad you were dating before you told me?!”

Jazz had specifically asked her parents not to mention it to Danny because Danny and Valerie had “a complicated history with each other that they’re still working through,” which … clearly wasn’t a lie, although said complicated history apparently involved a lot more ectoblasts than Jack had imagined.

Jazz shrugged, but the smirk on her face ruined her attempt at nonchalance. “I did tell you that I’d tested Mom and Dad’s secret-keeping abilities,” she said mildly.

“You made it sound like you’d been doing it for more than a couple weeks!” Danny accused.

Jazz gave her brother a flat look. “Danny, Val and I have been going steady for three months.”

“Three months?” Danny sputtered.

“And we weren’t really hiding it,” added Jazz. “I’m just the only one in this family who notices things, apparently.”

“I notice things,” Jack protested, a little stung.

Danny snorted. “I spent the first month that the portal was open throwing all the ghosts who got out back into the Zone literally behind your back, Dad.”

“He’s also fallen directly through his chair while we were all eating dinner,” Jazz commented without looking up from the message she was typing.

“That was one time,” Danny grumbled.

Jazz’s smirk widened. “Right; normally things fall through you instead.”

“You tossed them all back?” said Jack, finally processing what Danny had said and feeling faintly betrayed.

Danny threw his hands up. “They kept trying to attack you! What was I supposed to do, hold them tight and hope they didn’t turn intangible?”

Maddie cleared her throat to get their attention. “Danny,” she said patiently, “is that everyone who knows about you? Us, Sam, Tucker, and Valerie?”

Danny sobered and nodded in reply. “Yeah, pretty much. You four — six — and all the ghosts.”

“All the ghosts?” Jack echoed. A number of the things Ember had said to them suddenly made more sense.

Maddie frowned and asked, “Can they tell by looking at you?”

Danny shrugged, his brow furrowing. “Maybe some of them? Mostly, it’s that word spreads fast through the Zone.”

“And that you aren’t shy about going ghost in front of them,” added Jazz.

Danny flushed. “Right. And that.”

“‘Going ghost?’” asked Jack.

Danny turned his head to meet his father’s eyes for a moment. Then he grinned. “Going ghost!” he proclaimed in a way that reminded Jack of cartoon fighters calling out their signature moves.

The same rings of light as before sprang into being around Danny’s waist, near the main mass of Danny’s core, and swept over him, this time leaving the figure of Phantom behind.

Jack couldn’t help but study him. Danny’s face really did have the same structure in both forms, but the blurred edges and the shadows cast by the glow in his eyes obscured that unless you were looking closely. The wispiness of Phantom’s hair made it look wilder than Danny’s, but it was the same haircut underneath that. Jack wondered if part of the reason Danny hadn’t changed his hairstyle at all in the past two years had been because Danny’s and Phantom’s hair both abruptly changing in the same way might draw notice. Danny moved a little differently as a ghost, Jack could see now, a little more fluidly and assuredly. Still, the underlying gestures and expressions were all the same. Jack had never had the least bit of trouble reading Phantom.

I should have realized, he thought.

Maddie took one of her son’s hands and brought it into her lap. She turned it this way and that, her study of it not quite scientific. Searching for the familiar feeling of Danny’s hand underneath the ghostly aura, Jack realized as a memory of Maddie examining a baby Danny’s hand the same way flashed through his mind, and cementing in her brain that this, too, was what her son felt like now.

“Is the change voluntary?” Maddie asked Danny.

Danny let out a breathy chuckle. “Definitely not in the beginning,” he answered. “It just happened sometimes. Not a lot, at first. I had to practice it to get it under control.” He smiled ruefully. “Although I was actually practicing flying, not transforming.”

“Mm?” Maddie prompted.

Danny shrugged. “I wasn’t exactly interested in looking like a ghost until I realized there’re things I can only do as a ghost. I can make myself lighter without transforming, but to go full weightless, I need to pour so much spectral energy into the ectoplasm in me that I end up transforming anyway.”

Jack smiled at the mental image of his fourteen-year-old son determinedly learning to slip the bonds of gravity. Of course the first thing Danny had done with his powers was figure out how to fly.

“How close to space have you gotten by now?” Jack asked him fondly.

Danny grinned, and his eyes shone brighter. “The exosphere.”

“Ha! Look at that; you’re an astronaut already!” Jack clapped him on the back, and Danny leaned his head against his dad’s shoulder appreciatively.

Maddie looked consternated. “Is there enough air up there for you?” she asked.

“Oh, I had a helmet and oxygen tank,” Danny told them. “I, uh, borrowed some stuff from Axion when Technus took over one of their satellites. I returned everything that wasn’t broken after I stopped him, so I haven’t been back to the exosphere since.”

“We’ll have to make you your own spacesuit, then! We can tie it in with your satellite project,” said Jack, and Danny’s whole aura brightened.

Jack could get used to having that kind of visual to let him know when he’d said the right thing.

“You’re,” Danny near-whispered, his eyes wide and hopeful, “you really aren’t mad? At all? I thought I was gonna be grounded all summer at least.”

Jack spent a baffled moment wondering if Danny had thought they would be upset about his “borrowing” Axion gear. Maddie caught on quicker.

She squeezed the white-gloved hand she was still holding. “We really aren’t mad,” she confirmed. “We’ll never be mad at you for doing what you need to to stay safe, sweetie. I’m just … very glad you were finally able to tell us.” Her smile was a little wet, but she didn’t resume crying.

Danny winced at her expression and hurriedly reassured her, “It wasn’t a safety thing so much as a ‘me being stupid in the lab and not wanting to tell you exactly how stupid if it didn’t matter’ thing, I promise.”

Maddie’s eyes widened and flicked to Danny’s left hand again — the scarred one. The one, Jack realized nauseously, that must have been in direct physical contact with the portal when it turned on, not just vaguely near it, which was all that Danny had previously told them. He hadn’t been supposed to get that close to the in-progress portal. He’d known that. They hadn’t made him a specialized jumpsuit for high-voltage work, only a regular one.

And why in the world did we expect a curious fourteen-year-old to listen to every rule? Jack wondered painfully.

Jack’s vision blurred, and Maddie made a broken sound, and Danny looked back and forth between them in alarm.

“Hey, everyone take a deep breath,” Jazz coaxed them, and Jack did.

Immediately afterward, though, he choked out, “Danny, I’m so sorry.” He couldn’t have held the words back if he’d tried.

“Guys —” Jazz tried to intervene.

“It was my fault!” Danny insisted.

“No,” Maddie stopped him, tears slipping quietly down her cheeks. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“But I —”

“It was a mistake on your part. On top of many other mistakes that weren’t yours. But it wasn’t your fault.” Maddie’s grip shifted down to Danny’s wrist as she spoke, as if by instinct. Obligingly, Danny detransformed to give her easier access to his pulse.

He didn’t contest her words this time, though. One of his main asks back when they’d been negotiating their alliance had been for Maddie and Jack to improve their lab safety. He knew that at least a good part of the blame wasn’t on him.

He just needed to understand that none of it was on him. Jack opened his mouth to explain exactly that, but Jazz interrupted again.

“Guys. Not right now. The accident is on the restricted list, and for a good reason. If there’s anything you really need to know about it before we get around to it over the summer, I can fill you in later, but otherwise, it was almost two years ago and doesn’t need to be rehashed right now.”

Right; Danny shouldn’t be forced to remember that experience. Dying. Jack shuddered and reached for Danny’s other hand as surreptitiously as he could, which must not have been very surreptitiously, as Danny immediately offered it to him wrist-first.

Jack peeled off a glove to press his bare fingers directly to his son’s pulse point. Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum. He’d never before felt something so soothing. The sheer relief it brought him felt like a betrayal. He loved both sides of his son; he would love him just as much had Danny become a full ghost.

They were so lucky that Danny hadn’t, though. So lucky that their little boy still got to grow up.

No, no, close that creaking door back up, don’t break down, your family needs you, Jack told himself, doing his best to pull himself together.

What an emotional rollercoaster this day was proving to be. Jack supposed that made sense. All at once, two whole years’ worth of events in his son’s life were coming clear, and while a great deal of bad had happened in that span of time, inevitably, a great deal of good had as well.

Maddie finally relaxed her grip on Danny’s wrist and moved her hand back up to intertwine her fingers with his instead. With her other hand, she dried her face enough to offer Danny a smile.

Maddie breathed in sharply without changing her expression, like she was steeling herself. “Okay, sweetie. We won’t talk about it right now. I just need you to know that your — that what happened to you does matter. And whenever you’re ready to talk about it, your father and I will be here.”

Jack nodded.

“Oh,” said Danny. He bit his lip. “Uh. I … actually just meant that in the sense of, I thought the ghost stuff would go away on its own, for the first few weeks.”

Jack blinked and tilted his head. “You … thought being a ghost would go away?”

Danny’s shoulders hunched. “They said at the hospital that the spasms and tingling and stuff should go away in a few weeks! And they did,” he defended himself.

“But not the ‘ghost stuff,’” said Maddie, the corner of her mouth twitching up ever so briefly as she echoed Danny in reducing the ectoscientific theory- (and personal life-) shattering creation of a half-ghost down to the phrase “ghost stuff.”

Danny sighed. “Yeah, not the ghost stuff. I was working up to telling you when it hadn’t gone away after a month, so you could fix it, but then there … then there was the first big ghost fight I won and I actually saved a lot of people and … I didn’t know if I wanted it to be fixed anymore.” He swallowed. “I just, I wanted to be sure about that before I told you —”

Jack winced at the implied, probably-not-false assumption that he and Maddie would have pushed Danny to let them try to mitigate (or worse) his ghost half, had they learned about it before getting a chance to see how important a part of him it was and when Danny himself hadn’t yet been certain of how he felt about it.

“— And I wasn’t really sure until almost the end of the year, and by that point, I’d realized that I wasn’t going to quit no matter what you or anyone else said or did, so the plans to tell you kind of … faded to … Mom?”

Maddie had just gone wide-eyed and stiff next to him.

“Mom?” Danny anxiously repeated.

“Maddie?” tried Jack.

Danny’s teeth worried at his lip. “Mom, you aren’t going to try and make me stop, right?” His hands, still held in his parents’ grasps, clenched, not like he was readying himself for a fight but like he was bracing himself for what Maddie’s answer might be.

Why would we try to stop him? Jack wondered for a baffled moment, still full of pride for his son, but the answer came quickly. Phantom’s, Danny’s, x-rays had been full of past skeletal trauma. They’d watched him keep fighting with barely a pause after Aragon’s tail spikes had stabbed his back. Danny fought like a hardy and powerful ghost and took a corresponding level of punishment, but he had a human body underneath that ghostly aura. Just how badly was he getting hurt? Did his ghost adversaries care? His human ones certainly didn’t.

Jack watched Maddie’s eyes widen further as she processed the question, and he remembered all too suddenly that there was the matter of school, too, which, though far less important than their son’s well-being, was still a signal priority for Maddie. Excelling academically was the only way Maddie been able to attend college at all, winning scholarships to pay her way even as financial conditions got worse and worse for family farms like her parents’. Danny had excelled at school once, but not since taking up his self-appointed duties as Phantom.

Jack’s gaze met Maddie’s equally consternated one. Do we have a duty to stop him? And how would they ever manage that if they did? What would trying to forbid their son from doing something that he was both passionate about and good at do to their relationship with him, besides? Not to mention to Danny himself, if defending the town was how he fulfilled his obsession.

… And as much as Jack tried to quash his worries about what taking Phantom off the board might do to Amity Park, because that didn’t matter in this silent debate, the spike of fear at the thought of removing what the past few weeks had made clear to them was the linchpin of Amity Park’s defenses remained. Danny had more firepower than any of the rest of them, was far better at sensing and locating other ghosts, and got more respect and deference from other ghosts than it might ever be possible for an ordinary human to achieve. Jack and Maddie had made Amity Park the focal point of the Ghost Zone’s connection to their world; not even dismantling their portal would protect the town as well as Danny did now.

Danny paled further and further the longer his parents stayed silent. Maddie’s eyes turned to him, and her expression softened reassuringly.

Jack barely contained a sigh of relief. He and Maddie clearly had to do something to change the current situation, but that didn’t have to be fighting with Danny about his chosen role. Jack didn’t want to oppose his own children ever, ever again.

“No, sweetie,” Maddie gently answered her son. “We won’t try to make you stop. I just need you to promise me one thing, okay?” She waited until Danny turned his full attention to her to continue, “You work so hard to protect everyone else in this town. I need you to do the best you can to protect my precious little boy, too.” She cupped one hand around his face and brushed a bang of his hair to the side for emphasis.

Danny swallowed. He arranged his face like he was aiming for a cocky or indignant expression, but it didn’t quite take. Danny gave up on it with a sigh. His knees curled partway towards his chest, and the fist in Jack’s hand opened and tightened itself around Jack’s fingers. “I … I’ll try,” he promised

“We’ll hold you to that,” Maddie warned him.

A resigned but gratified half-smile formed on their son’s lips. “Okay.”

“And we’ll have your back. Ghost Getters to the end,” Jack promised.

Danny’s smile twitched wider. “Yeah,” he agreed. Then, “Thank you.”

“Always, son.”

They all sat and caught their breaths for a minute after that. Jack focused on the feeling of his son’s hand in his, as if it were a charm that could ward off any new revelations until after he’d processed the current ones. Danny closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the couch. Maddie stared off into the distance. Jack wondered what the two of them were thinking about.

Jazz spent the time tapping at her phone, and she was the one to break the silence. “Danny?”

“Mm?” Danny answered her, sounding half-asleep.

Jazz asked, “Tucker wants to know if it’s alright for him to bring his parents.”

“Where?” Danny mumbled, then abruptly sat up. “Wait, you mean here? Everyone coming over for an afterparty was just a joke!”

Jack blinked. The rest of the Ghost Getters were coming over?

Jazz raised an eyebrow at her brother. “You thought they were joking?”

“Yes! Well, not Val, but she only threatened to come if I chickened out at the last minute, which I didn’t,” Danny pointed out.

“She said she’s on her way,” Jazz informed him.

“Why?”

“Apparently, she already bought the popcorn and feels sure there’ll still be use for it today.”

Danny groaned and dropped his head forward, managing to make the gesture dramatic even though he had nothing but air to drop it onto. “Fine,” he grumbled. “Fine, whatever, let’s knock that reveal out today, too. Tucker can bring his parents.” He paused for a moment, then cast an anxious look at his sister. “They won’t … even if they’re mad at me for getting Tucker involved with ghost fights, they won’t tell anyone I’m Phantom, right? They’ll just, like, brick all of our computers in revenge or something?”

Jack blanched at the thought of the havoc the combined technological prowess of the Foley clan could wreak on Fentonworks.

Jazz smiled reassuringly. “Tucker wouldn’t be bringing them if he thought they would be mad at you, Danny,” she soothed him. “And even if they were furious, you know they’d never do that to you.”

Visions of mad scientists making half-ghosts danced again through Jack’s mind, along with Maddie’s alarmed earlier question about the GIW.

… The GIW who were after Jack’s son.

… The GIW who had been in Jack’s house multiple times searching for Jack’s son.

Another Jenga block pulled free from Jack’s emotional equilibrium tower.

Maddie shared an anxious glance with her husband, then turned towards the center of the couch and asked, “Danny? Do you have some way of stopping all the ghosts who know about you from telling anyone?”

“Huh?” Danny blinked. “Oh. I … don’t think any of them would be able to explain how I’m different from, like, Johnny Thirteen in a way that makes sense to humans? And they’d only talk about it at all if they were asked the right questions and felt like answering, so I don’t really worry about it.” He shrugged. “Most ghosts don’t bother learning any details about my human life, besides.”

The uneasiness didn’t leave Maddie’s expression. “But some do know enough to be able to relay your human identity?”

Danny frowned. “I mean, I guess so. Most anyone at Casper could point out who always disappears during a ghost fight, though, which is probably where anyone who’s trying to find a human identity for me would look first, so.” He shrugged again, then muttered, “I have got to get better at duplication.”

“We’ll work on it with you over summer!” Jack decided, clapping his hands together. He felt relieved to have something obvious to do to improve his son’s safety.

“Oh, yes, we’ll certainly help you train,” Maddie agreed. “I know you can punch with better form than what you’ve been doing. Did I stop supervising your karate drills too early?”

“Wha— it doesn’t work like that in midair! I can’t get power from my stance with no stance; I need momentum!” Danny spluttered.

“Red Huntress manages,” Maddie pointed out.

“Valerie has a hoverboard to brace against,” Danny objected.

“Do you need a hoverboard?” asked Jack, mind lighting up with schematics.

“No, it’d slow me down. I need faster evac procedures so it’s safe to drive ghosts to the ground when I do need the advantage I’ve got in ground fighting.”

Maddie hummed thoughtfully. “We can work on that,” she allowed. “But we’re going to be working on you wasting less energy in your aerial moves, too. We’ll set up a training schedule once school lets out.”

“Oh, so I am being punished,” Danny grumbled, but he didn’t quite manage to look upset about that plan.

Maddie ruffled his hair.

The first guest arrived a few minutes after that. Jack spared a moment for gratitude, as the “Welcome to Fentonworks!” doorbell jingle sounded, that he and Maddie had already cleaned up the house yesterday in case they’d needed the space to feel welcoming and homey to Phantom.

Danny beat the rest of them to the door. When he pulled it open, Sam’s elbow was still sticking out towards their doorbell from where she held a stack consisting of a large white box and an almost-as-large covered bowl.

“Here, put the bottom one in the freezer,” Sam instructed before he could greet her, shifting the stack into Danny’s hands.

Danny blinked down, obviously curious. “Salad, of course, and …?”

“Don’t ‘of course’ the salad, it’s all homegrown veggies, and I had to make sure there was something I could eat since Tucker’s doing the rest of the food.”

Jack stepped over, mentally searching for the right “lovely to have you, thanks for bringing food, why are you here” phrase. Jazz, meanwhile, took the salad bowl into her own hands so that Danny could open the white box for a peek.

What lay inside was a cake topped with a ring of miniature upside-down ice cream cones with light blue scoops underneath them and, in the ring’s center, a perfectly iced Phantom logo.

Danny gasped in delight. “Ben and Jerry’s Marshmallow Sky?”

“Yep,” Sam confirmed.

“Have you got stencils of the logo?” asked Jack, instead of any of the things he’d been considering saying. His son had his own ghost hunting logo; Jack needed to get his hands on stencils of it and plaster it everywhere.

“No, I freehanded that,” Sam told him, shrugging. “I mean, I freehanded the original, so it wasn’t hard.”

“That’s some impressive work,” Maddie commented.

Sam blushed a little at the praise, then shook her head and refocused. “Danny, seriously, get that in the freezer. You are not good at refreezing melted ice cream to the right consistency.”

“Right!” Danny stopped near-drooling over the ice cream cake and scampered to the kitchen.

Sam watched him go, then turned to Jack and Maddie, who were both still trying to get an actual “Welcome” out, and cut them off before they even spoke.

“I’ll only say this once and not bring it up again unless you do something to make me,” Sam quietly but firmly informed them, “but hurt or betray him again, and I will destroy you legally, financially, and academically. I’ve got the plans for each ready to be implemented at a moment’s notice.”

Jack reared back. “We’re not, we won’t —”

“Good,” the surprisingly intimidating goth teenager replied. A shiver ran down Jack’s spine.

“… Thank you for looking out for him,” Maddie said faintly.

“Sam, stop threatening my parents!” Danny called from behind them. Jack looked over his shoulder to see Danny reentering the room, his arms crossed over his chest.

Sam held up her hands in mock surrender.

Danny sighed. To his parents, he said, “Look, don’t take it personally. Sam just doesn’t like parents in general.”

Sam shrugged again, not denying it.

Maddie managed a weak smile. “I suppose we don’t have to worry about you wanting to tell your own parents, then?”

“Absolutely not,” Sam agreed.

“Speaking of, it looks like the Foleys are about to pull up,” said Jazz, back on her phone after dropping the salad off on the table.

Sam nodded. “Great; I’ll go … see if they need help carrying anything.” She marched out the door with a determined look.

Jack wondered whether it was his duty as the unforewarned host to try to save the Foleys from getting their own preemptive threatening speech from Sam. (Just how many locked and loaded revenge plans against her friends’ parents did the girl have? Was that normal behavior for teenagers these days?)

Jack’s hand was grabbed before he could reach a conclusion. He looked down to see his son staring up at him anxiously, his other hand holding his mother’s.

“How should I tell the Foleys?” Danny whispered.

Jack blinked. Did knowing that Danny was Phantom automatically draft them into a planning committee for how to break the news to others? … That would explain why Jazz and Tucker, not just Danny, had apparently been busy last night. Jack wondered if they’d run rehearsals.

“As if it isn’t a big deal?” Maddie hesitantly suggested.

Danny frowned. “What, just ‘hey, so, funny story’ it?”

Jazz snorted a laugh. “‘Hey, remember all the times I’ve shown up at your house without appearing on your front door camera?’” she suggested.

“They have a camera on their front door?” Danny asked, looking consternated.

“On all of their downstairs doors and windows, apparently,” said Jazz. Danny’s expression shifted to alarm. “They asked me whether you made a habit of entering and leaving from the second floor at home, too, and whether there was anything worrying happening at home. Of course, I just told them you were really dedicated to your parkour hobby.”

“You could have warned me!”

“Then you would have started acting really suspicious around them,” Jazz reasoned.

The argument was saved from escalation by Tucker walking through the front door with a large tray of nachos and a gift bag dangling from his fingers underneath one side of the tray. Sam followed behind, a casserole dish in her hands, so Jack supposed the Foleys had managed to get some help out of her in exchange for her threats after all.

“Danny! Hey, man, congrats!” Tucker said with a grin aimed at the whole Fenton family. He nudged the hand with the gift bag and half of his tray closer to Danny. “Nachos as promised and a little something designed by Sam and sewn by yours truly that you can finally wear around home.”

Danny let go of his parents and took the gift bag quizzically.

The entrance of the elder Foleys pulled Danny’s attention back up from the gift bag. Maurice was carrying another casserole, while Angela held a plastic container of cookies and what had to be one of her largest purses. I guess we won’t have to worry about lunch or dinner, thought Jack.

“Danny!” Angela echoed her son, beaming. “Let me put these down on a table, and then I want a hug. Maddie, I’ve made cinnamon carrot apple cheesecake cookies this time,” she informed Jack’s wife. The next volley in their cookie recipe competition, it seemed.

Danny looked at Tucker in bafflement as Angela and Maurice bustled past. “Did you cook all of this?”

Tucker snorted. “Heck, no, mom and dad did most of it. But the nachos are all mine, baby! Three types of cheese, left, right, and center! Nachos Neapolitan!”

“That’s not what Neapolitan — nevermind; what do your parents think we’re celebrating?” Danny asked, his fingers tightening on the handle of his gift bag.

This time it was Tucker’s turn to look confused. “You said they could come?”

“So you already told them?” asked Danny. Jack couldn’t tell from his tone whether he felt more upset or relieved.

“I never told them in the first place. I just mentioned to them on Thursday that — I mean, we’ve all been doing the ‘we know they know but none of us are going to acknowledge it out loud’ thing with my parents for a while now, right?” Tucker took in Danny’s expression. “… Not right?”

“I didn’t even know that,” Sam admitted.

“You should come around more often, dear,” Angela told her, reemerging from the kitchen. “You miss things, only popping by now and then. And it’s always good to have an excuse to make these boys eat vegetables. Do let me know what you think of that casserole, by the by.”

Sam eyed the casserole dish that she had yet to set down with new appreciation. Tucker eyed it with new suspicion.

Danny stared at Angela. “You guys knew? You didn’t … you never said anything,” he accused in a small voice. Jack put a hand on his shoulder and felt warmed when Danny’s muscles relaxed in response.

“Eh, we didn’t want to worry you,” said Maurice, stepping up beside his wife.

“They make a point of checking if you’re okay after literally every big ghost fight?” Tucker put in, clearly still confused by this revelation of ignorance.

Danny shuffled his feet. “Normal people can get hurt in ghost fights too.”

“But you keep phasing stuff through cupboard doors instead of just opening them when you’re over at mine?”

“He also does that at home,” Jazz informed Tucker.

… Maybe Jazz did have a point about Jack’s and Maddie’s observational skills.

Angela chuckled and opened her arms. “Be nice now, Tucker. And Danny, I’m waiting on that hug,” she said warmly.

Danny hesitated, but Jack gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze and let go. The Foleys had always been good to his son. Even better than Jack had realized, if they’d made their home a place of sanctuary for him these past two years. Jack wondered what balance Angela and Maurice had found between staying appraised of the kids’ ghost-related activities and giving them space and trust; he’d have to ask them later.

Danny passed the gift bag to his dad (a downward glance revealed black and white fabric peeking out from underneath the tissue paper — Phantom-themed casual wear, maybe?), walked over, and lost all of his remaining stiffness as Angela embraced him. He hugged her back.

“You did good,” Angela told him. Danny perked up noticeably at the praise. If he were in ghost form, Jack suspected his aura would have brightened. “How do you feel? Any lighter?”

“Hard to get lighter than ‘weightless,’” Danny quipped. He gave a brief, breathy laugh as they released each other. “But, yeah. Yeah.”

Angela smiled. “Good.”

“How long have you known?” Maddie broke in in a wounded tone. And not told us? was easy to infer. Jack stepped closer and wrapped his free arm around his wife. She leaned into his side.

“Oh, we’ve only known since Thursday, when the kids were getting ready to tell you,” Angela innocently replied, looking up to meet Maddie’s eyes as she spoke. “We may have suspected for a while before that, but then, we never did confirm anything. And we certainly didn’t want to spread around unconfirmed rumors.”

Maurice cleared his throat. “How are you two taking it?”

“It’s … sinking in,” Maddie answered honestly. Jack nodded his agreement. Waking up tomorrow, after their brains had had a night of sleep to process everything, was something Jack could already tell would be an experience.

Danny had turned back towards them. Maurice put his hands on each of Danny’s shoulders from behind, in his own version of his wife’s hug, and smiled when Danny looked back. To Jack and Maddie, he said, “You’re going to be good to your boy, now, aren’t you? Because Angie and I aren’t above kidnapping him for ourselves.”

“Of course we are,” said Jack, and he could feel Maddie nod even as she stiffened against him. “We Fentons always stand by our own!”

Danny beamed at them.

“Oh, that reminds me!” said Angela. She rummaged in her purse and pulled out a folder. “I don’t know whether you’ve seen yesterday’s Angle yet, but I picked up an extra copy for you all. Thought you might like the front page.”

In their rush yesterday to compile research and ghost parenting advice and backup plans, neither Jack nor Maddie had even glanced at a newspaper. Jack stepped closer and squinted so that he could read the headline of Angela’s offered Amity Park Angle copy. He blinked when he made the words out.

PHANTOM-FENTON ALLIANCE HOLDS STRONG AMID GIW PRESSURE

The accompanying picture, spread across the whole width of the paper, showed Danny as Phantom offering a hand for Maddie to take and smiling with his head cocked, like he was asking his mother permission to go wild. Maddie smiled back indulgently, reaching for his offered hand, and Jack, half a step behind them and holding Phantom’s other hand, looked fondly on.

One of the camerapeople in the gaggle of reporter types around Lance Thunder must have snapped the photo on Thursday, moments before Phantom had pulled his disappearing trick on Lance. Jack grinned at the memory.

Jazz let out a delighted cooing sound. “Can I have that? I need to add it to my Danny scrapbook!”

Jack’s mind stuttered for a moment, still, before it connected “Danny scrapbook” to the Phantom scrapbook that Jazz had steadfastly been filling with every positive newspaper clipping about … about her little brother. Oh. Jack had assumed she’d been compiling that to shove in her parents’ faces during an argument, but she’d never done so — instead waiting, Jack supposed, until they could all go through the album together and be nothing but proud of the youngest Fenton.

“Sure, dear,” said Angela, closing the protective folder back over the newspaper.

“Why don’t I run it up to your room for you?” Maddie offered. Her smile looked a little strained. “I should go and freshen up for a minute before more guests arrive, anyway.”

Maurice waved away her implied concern. “Don’t worry about playing host right now, you two. Angie and I will look after everyone. Take all the time you need.”

Maddie appeared to want to protest for a moment, but in the end, she accepted the folder with nothing more than a tired nod. Jack tried not to compare her flight up the stairs to a tactical retreat, despite the visual similarities.

“So, I know that face you were making in the photo,” said Jazz. Jack blinked and turned around in time to see Danny look away from the stairs to refocus on Jazz, his expression shifting from concern to confusion. “What were you planning? What did you do?”

Tucker grinned and answered in Danny’s stead, “Oh, man, you should’ve seen the broadcast. Best face Lance has ever made on air.”

“What happened?” Jazz pressed.

“So, Lance caught up to Danny and your parents after Aragon was Thermos’d, and your mom gave him the ‘ghost fight’s over, don’t use the bridge’ soundbite he needed, right?” Tucker’s hands flew as he avidly described the scene. “But Lance decided to interview her about the GIW case instead of the fight, like a jerk. So Danny steps up, and Lance gets all excited ‘cause Danny normally avoids interviews like the plague, so he immediately asks Danny if he can get a statement about the case, and Danny waits. Until. The microphone is right in front of his face. And then says ‘Nope.’ and vanishes all three of them.”

Jazz snorted. Jack grinned again. Danny looked like he was trying not to swell with pride at this dramatic rendition of his non-interview.

Angela tapped a knuckle against her own smile. “You know, I’ve always wondered how you see when you’re invisible,” she commented.

Danny shrugged. He offered in answer, “Belief-based ghost magic? Ecto-photons? Light somehow getting expelled after my eyes process it? I try not to question it.”

And failed, clearly, little scientist that he was, if he had three whole theories on the tip of his tongue. Jack could practically see gears whirring in Danny’s mind. That’s my boy, alright.

Another knock on the front door halted the conversation.

“It’s open!” Jazz called out.

Everyone in the room turned to look as the door swung inward. Danny opened his mouth and got out, “Hey, Va—” before the sight of Damon Gray looming behind his daughter stoppered him up. A quick glance around the room showed Jack that everyone else was equally surprised about Damon being here.

Damon blinked at the crowded room in confusion, leaving Valerie as the only one who appeared to understand what was happening.

Jack studied Damon. The two men hadn’t spoken much since their daughters had started dating and had thrown them into the awkward mutual understanding of whose side each of them would take if their girls ever broke each other’s hearts, and what communication they’d had before then had been more business-oriented, but Jack would like to call Damon a friend. At the very least, there was mutual respect between them. Damon had demonstrated a knack for operating ecto-tech, and Jack had kept him updated on his and Maddie’s newest inventions so that he could incorporate them into the private security systems he built.

Jack broke the silence before it could get too frozen. “Damon! It’s been too long. What are you doing, ahh, these days?”

“Hey, Jack,” Damon replied, glancing once more around the room before settling his gaze on him. Valerie walked over to her age-mates as her father spoke, a bag of popcorn clutched in one hand and the other hand half-submerged in her purse. “It’s been the same old on my end, still at Axion and taking other contracts to install my security systems when I can. Is … well. Is Phantom here? My daughter said there was something we should all talk about? Although I’m not sure if that includes your other guests —”

“Valerie,” Sam interrupted in a venomous hiss.

“Not cool, dude,” added Tucker.

The rest of the room turned to stare at the quartet of younger teenagers.

Valerie grinned cheekily. “What’s not cool? Inviting my dad to the same shindig that two of you also brought your parents to?”

“You didn’t ask —” Sam began.

“Oh, we care about not telling my dad about things that might be private without permission, all of a sudden?”

That was enough to stop Sam at least momentarily, as well as, apparently, to make Danny wince. Both opened their mouths, but Tucker beat them to it.

“That was over a year ago,” he said to Valerie. “And you know the party’s not what we’re talking about.”

“Not that, huh?” said Valerie. “Did you mean this?”

Valerie moved so quickly that Jack’s eyes could barely follow. He saw her stance shift, caught a gleam off of something in her hand, and then Danny jerked forward with a startled yelp that had every adult in the room lurching towards him. Light bloomed around his middle and swept over him, transforming him once again.

The silence definitely did become frozen this time.

Danny looked anxiously at Damon. Jack, after checking that his son didn’t appear injured, followed Danny’s gaze. Damon’s expression was more surprised than shocked, but there was a distinct trace of “horrified” in it that Jack hoped was about him recontextualizing something that had happened to Phantom rather than about Danny himself.

Tucker, Jack noted in the corner of his vision, quickly and quietly placed himself in a placating position between Valerie and Sam. Sam looked paralyzed by the sheer intensity of her shock and anger. Valerie, ignoring the prevailing mood, ate a handful of popcorn.

Jazz sighed from behind Jack. “Was this really the right time for petty vengeance?” she asked.

“Definitely,” Valerie answered her. Jack turned his head in time to get a clear glimpse as she shifted her popcorn bag out of the crook of her elbow and slipped the device she was holding back into her purse. The device was a copy of the contingency-plan gadget she’d given the Fentons and had told them to use if they desperately needed to disable Phantom’s ability to bypass ghost shields for a while. She’d called it a “ghost lock,” which Jack had assumed meant it locked down the shields but which probably referred to locking Danny into his ghost form instead. No matter what form he was in before, apparently, Jack thought, looking back at his son.

Danny rubbed the back of his neck. “H-Hey, Mr. Gray,” he stuttered, the echo in his voice stronger than usual. “Good to see you again; I’m just gonna … go patrol. Right now.” He turned around, phased through his friends, and took off towards the back door.

“Get back here, you coward!” yelled Valerie, running after him in a shower of spilled popcorn.

Jazz turned to follow with a long-suffering sigh. “I’ll go calm them down.”

True to her word, everyone left in the living room soon heard the muffled sounds of the three of them talking somewhere deeper in the house, rather than the opening and closing of a door.

By that point, Sam seemed to have wrangled her emotions. She stuffed them all into a glare sent Damon’s way. The man took a step back. “Just to be clear,” Sam carefully enunciated, “if Phantom’s identity gets out, the Red Huntress’s won’t be far behind even if we try to stop it. And if it happens and I find out you were involved, I will hide all of Cujo’s toys in your apartment complex and will give out everything I know about the escape codes for your security systems to every ghost I see.”

Damon held up his hands. “I have no intention of doing that.”

Sam nodded.

Maurice’s eyes widened. “Oh, your daughter’s the Red Huntress. Well, welcome to the club of parents of teenage Ghostbusters.”

“The official name is ‘Ghost Getters,’ Dad,” Tucker informed him.

Damon shook his head and turned to stare at the Foleys. His body fell into a broad and slightly intimidating resting pose that he must have perfected in the course of his security guard work. He nodded slowly, like a stun was wearing off. “Got any advice on how to wrangle these kids?” he asked at last.

“Hey!” Tucker protested.

Jack only needed one second to think about it. “Work with them, not against them,” he answered fervently.

Sam turned her head to give Jack the first approving look he’d seen on her face all day.

Damon’s mustache twitched in disdain. “From anyone who’s had more success than Phantom’s parents?” he said.

Jack winced.

Damon glanced at him, then deflated a little. “Not that I’m one to talk, I suppose.” He sighed and rubbed his face. “Your son. That … was not how I expected you were related.”

It took Jack a moment to parse this. “You knew Phantom was part of our family?” he asked.

“Given the name and appearance and how fixated on each other you’ve always been? Not to mention the way your daughter acts towards him.” Damon dropped his hands from his face. “I thought it was a ‘great-uncle who died too young’ situation or the like.”

The name? He got that from going through the first few pages of an alphabetical list of astronauts to find the most common names, thought Jack. But then, Damon wouldn’t know that, and Jack supposed “Daniel” was a classic enough name to have the feel of being passed down through family. How many other people had noticed the resemblance? Should Jack and Maddie fabricate a Great-Uncle Daniel in case anyone else asked? Alicia would doubtless help her sister with some creative genealogy.

Damon was frowning at him now. “How did your son die that young?”

Jack’s breath left him.

“He’s not dead!” Sam insisted at once. “There was an accident and he got ghost powers, but he’s not dead.”

“The boy’s still been growing, these past couple years,” Maurice put in.

But a near miss wasn’t enough to make a ghost, even if Danny had somehow come out alive. My little boy. He was just fourteen and … Jack instinctively reached out, but Danny wasn’t next to him this time, wasn’t even in his sight: no immediate counter-evidence kept the realization from sinking the rest of the way in now, tearing up Jack’s insides as it went down.

Did the others not understand what Danny’s being a ghost meant? … Or was their insistence because of the awful things Maddie and Jack had said about ghosts, and a fear of their applying that to Danny? Was that why Danny had made sure his parents knew he still counted among the living before he’d told them who he was?

“He’s alive,” Jack said, the affirmation partly for Damon and partly for himself. He could even hear Danny’s voice, just a bit too far away to make out the exact words. His ghostly echo had disappeared, Jazz’s probably having convinced Valerie to reverse the ghost form lock.

“Hm,” Damon acknowledged.

Jack felt a hand on his arm and turned, blinking, to find Angela now standing next to him. The folders Jack and Maddie had left on the couch were in her other hand. When had she moved?

Angela’s smile was … sad, he thought, or knowing, or maybe both. “Why don’t you go run these upstairs so we have more seating for lunch?” she suggested, holding out the folders. “Maybe check on Maddie, too?”

A clink from the kitchen made Jack look over. Everyone else in the living room had moved towards the other room, congregating for the serving of lunch, it looked like. For once in his life, Jack didn’t feel up to the midday meal.

Angela gently pressed the folders into his hands.

“Right,” said Jack. “I’ll go grab Maddie; we’ll be right down to help you serve —”

“Take your time,” Angela interrupted kindly. “I’m sure your kids can show us where everything is. There’ll still be food left whenever you come down.”

A good host would probably have protested further, but Jack’s Jenga tower was toppling now, so he simply nodded and double-timed it up to his room.

“How did your son die that young?”

We built a ghost portal and we let him help, Jack silently answered the mental echo of Damon’s question. We told him not to touch it once the electricity was connected, but he didn’t listen. We didn’t keep him safe. We thought he was smart enough and strong enough to handle anything. He was fourteen. He collapsed down onto his bed without bothering to turn on the lights or open the window blinds. His tears were getting to the point where he could barely see anyway. He was fourteen. We weren’t there; we were across town trying to make a camping gear sale. Our son died in our home and we weren’t even there.

Jack wanted to hold Danny close and feel the beat of his pulse again, but he didn’t want Danny to see him breaking down like this, and he wouldn’t have been able to follow Jazz’s command to keep the stream of depressing apologies at bay right then. Had Danny been trying to fix the portal, to make his parents happy, when it had killed him?

He’s alive. He’s alive. He’s downstairs eating casserole and ice cream cake. He’s okay.

But he’d still died. Alone. Or — not quite alone. Jack had almost forgotten that frantic call from Tucker, Sam’s equally frantic voice talking to an ambulance dispatcher in the background, but he remembered it all too vividly now.

He remembered reassuring Maddie, as they raced to the hospital, that Danny was a Fenton, that he could survive anything. Technically, he supposed, he’d been right: Danny had survived even death.

He shouldn’t have had to.

And where had his parents been while he’d recovered? By his side throughout the hospital stay, at least, but once Danny was back home and insisting that he was fine, the now-active portal had taken up so much of their attention that they’d missed every one of the half-ghost mishaps Jazz had mentioned. Danny had taken up ghost hunting in a Fenton Jumpsuit with a Fenton Thermos under a barely-altered name, and Jack and Maddie hadn’t put the pieces together, had hunted him rather than helped him. They hadn’t been there when he’d needed them. Not at his death; not in the aftermath.

We’re here for him now. We’re helping him now. Years too late. Would it ever be enough?

How long would it take for Danny to turn to them first when he needed help, instead of to one of his teenage friends or to no one at all? How long before he stopped repeatedly emphasizing to them that he was alive, before he believed that they truly accepted his ghost half? How long would it take for him to truly accept his ghost half, after every wrong thing his parents had made him believe about ghosts?

Jack’s heart felt broken open. It will never be enough.

It will have to be enough.

Jack breathed deep and swallowed down a fresh wave of tears. We will make it be enough. They were Fentons. The impossible was what they did! They would make it work if it took the whole rest of their lives, if it took more than the rest of their lives. After all, demonstrably, not even death could stop a determined Fenton.

They would be there for their son. Danny hadn’t given up on them yet, and Jack and Maddie were every bit as stubborn as their kids. Their family would find a way forward.

Jack sat hunched in the dark room for a while longer, slowly regaining control of himself. He could hear the voices of his kids and his guests filtering up the stairs, lighthearted and lively and warm. Eventually, it occurred to him that he couldn’t hear Maddie.

Jack pushed himself to his feet and cleaned off his face. He set off down the hall.

His first thought was that Maddie would be in Jazz’s room, maybe having decided to add the newest Angle clipping to the scrapbook herself and getting caught up in going through the rest of the scrapbook. Instead, he spotted her in Danny’s room. She was sitting lightly on the edge of his bed, staring at either the star atlas on the nightstand or at Umi (short for Ursa Minor), Danny’s pink stuffed bear. From this angle, Jack couldn’t tell which. He knocked once on the open door to let her know he was there.

Maddie turned to look at him. Her expression was … hollow. Drying tear tracks glistened on her cheeks.

“Maddie,” said Jack, heading over and settling beside her.

Maddie didn’t react to his silent offer of a hug, but she did squeeze back when he took her hand in his. So, she needed to be in her own head for a little longer, but she didn’t mind Jack’s being here. Jack nodded and looked around the room to distract himself from the wait.

The bedroom was nearly spotless. Danny did have a tendency to clean when he was stressed; Jack supposed he was seeing the evidence of how the past week had affected his son in the clean carpet and dust-free surfaces. He hoped the stress had been more about finals or the GIW situation or Vlad’s showing up (… oh man, they were going to have to find a way to tell Vlad to stay away from their son without hinting that Danny was Phantom. That was … that was a whole mess of roiling emotions that Jack could figure out another day.) than about telling his parents who he was.

They should probably include some type of de-stressing practice in the training they did with Danny over the summer, just in case.

Maddie inhaled sharply and squeezed Jack’s hand again, and he turned to face her.

Some light had returned to her eyes, thankfully, but her expression was still bleak. Tonelessly, she said, “I never thought I could be the kind of person who’s a danger to her own child.”

Jack shivered. He couldn’t stand those rare occasions when Maddie doubted herself, and this sounded even worse, less “self-doubt” than “self-hatred.” “We’re past that now, Mads,” he promised. “We’ve still got time to fix it.” The rest of our lives and beyond, if we need it.

“We can’t fix it.” Maddie shook her head. She cut Jack off with a gesture when he opened his mouth to protest. “Jack, no. We hurt him. We hurt him so badly he couldn’t even tell us what we were putting him through.”

Jack swallowed hard. “Maddie, it’s … it’s a big mess, and I wish we’d done a better job of everything or he’d told us sooner, but we still —”

“That wasn’t his fault,” Maddie interrupted, desolately.

“Well — yeah, we should’ve been better at listening, and we can’t blame ‘im for being a teenager,” Jack started, but stopped when Maddie let out a chuckle that he could only describe as pained.

“City Hall,” she said.

Jack frowned. “What?”

“Danny said he stopped thinking about telling us near the end of that year,” Maddie explained, hollowness returning to her gaze. “When everything went down at City Hall.”

Jack didn’t know how she could possibly remember the timing of that, but if she was right — and Maddie was usually right about the timing of things — then … Jack’s blood ran cold.

But he didn’t say “City Hall” when he was listing restricted topics, some desperate part of Jack’s mind protested. And “end of the year” isn’t — “That isn’t an exact enough timeline to really know,” he finished aloud.

Maddie just shook her head again. “He brought it up on Thursday. When we were talking about how his parents — how we’d hurt him.”

Jack stared. “I was sure if I just started talking, they would at least recognize enough to hear me out. Obviously, that didn’t work,” echoed through his mind.

“Oh,” said Jack, his voice so small that he barely recognized the sound of it himself.

That pained chuckle erupted from Maddie again. “I thought it was funny,” she confessed. Her hand went slack in Jack’s. “He looked so shocked and scared when we didn’t stand down when he tried to explain himself in City Hall. I thought that he couldn’t fathom why manipulation and lies weren’t working for him. I thought it was funny.”

Her voice broke, tears pouring anew down her face. This time, when Jack offered a hug, she accepted it. She buried her head in his shoulder. He rested a hand between her shoulderblades.

“I was enjoying myself,” Maddie pressed on in a muffled voice, as if Jack were a priest who could offer her absolution instead of an equally guilty sinner. He’d probably been having fun with the hunt, too. He always did. A lively adventure for them; a hellish ordeal for their son, their prey. Maddie said, “I was keeping a hit count. There were other ghosts, and they were fighting with him, and he looked like a desperate kid and told us he just wanted to talk. I fired a bazooka at him. I didn’t even think.” Jack hugged her tighter as a single sob shook her. “No wonder nobody told us he was Danny.”

Jack sat there and held her, taking that all in. Danny had told his parents that they weren’t responsible for his worse nightmares, after that scare with the Sonic Suppressor, but he might have been lying, or his standards for nightmares might be very skewed. Considering he remembers dying. Jack closed his eyes.

Maddie’s breathing stuttered and deepened in a pattern that suggested she was forcing each breath. Eventually, though, the pattern evened out, and she pulled back from Jack, dried her face, and turned again towards the head of the bed. Her hand reached out for Umi but hovered over the bear without touching it. Jack watched, reminded of his wife’s hesitation in hugging Danny earlier, and wondered for the first time if her hesitancy had been less about fearing that her son wouldn’t feel familiar or wouldn’t feel real than about worrying that she didn’t have the right to touch him.

Jack swallowed bile. “We’ll make it up to him, Maddie,” he promised. He had to believe that was possible. “No matter how long it takes. We’ll make it up to him someday.”

Maddie’s hand dropped to her lap. Her breath shuddered again. Quietly, she said, “We can’t keep him.”

The whole bottom dropped out of Jack’s chest. “What?”

“We can’t keep him,” Maddie repeated, with horrible certainty. “He deserves better. Alicia will offer him her home — you know they’ve always gotten along — or he can live with the Foleys if, if he can’t bear to leave Amity Park.”

Jack’s world shattered into more and more pieces with each word. Give up? On their son? As something that the woman he’d built his life together with felt okay about?

“Maddie,” Jack managed, struggling to speak. “You — don’t want Danny to stay?”

“Of course I want Danny to stay!” Maddie wheeled back around, and there were enough fresh tears on her cheeks that she must have been crying the whole time she’d been speaking. “I can’t bear the thought of him leaving! But we can’t be that selfish. Danny needs a home that’s safe. We don’t deserve him.”

Jack stared at her, seeing the love and the hurt in her eyes and trying, so hard, to reconcile those emotions with her words. If she’d kept talking, he might never have understood. But, partner of over twenty years that she was, she quieted enough to let him think, and, finally, he realized where the disconnect was.

Maddie might be the oddball of her own family. They loved the land and practical challenges; she loved grand theories and searching for something new. Jack had seen them all shake their heads at each other in fond confusion many times. But never once that Jack knew of had they made Maddie feel the slightest bit unwelcome. When Maddie had left home, she’d done it only for her own goals and with the understanding that no one would be the least bit upset if she came back.

She didn’t know how easy it was to feel unwanted.

Objectively, Maddie had her facts straight. Fentonworks was built like an anti-ghost fortress, and of course Jack and Maddie didn’t deserve their son. The best parents on Earth couldn’t deserve him, let alone them. It was only the conclusion she’d drawn from those facts that was wrong.

Jack took a deep breath, wracking his brains for the words to explain. Slowly, he said, “Maddie. You’re right, but —” Maddie closed her eyes and dropped her head in resignation, and Jack reached forward to grip her shoulder and get her to keep listening. “But it doesn’t matter. This is Danny’s home. If he wants to stay here, then he deserves that option. It doesn’t matter what we deserve. And if he wants us here with him, then we owe it to him to do everything we can to make that work. Fixing the rest of the house and helping him train and, and anything else he needs.”

There. That was the page both he and Maddie had been on before she’d come upstairs and had her own breakdown, wasn’t it? He just needed to guide her back to it.

Maddie met his eyes but said nothing. Even with all his years of practice, right now, he couldn’t read her expression.

“You can’t tell him you think he’ll be better off somewhere else, Mads. Doesn’t matter how you mean it; it’ll hurt him,” Jack insisted. He thought about Jazz telling them, “Nobody wants to lose their parents over something like this.” He thought about Danny pulling them as close as he possibly could when they hugged. He thought about a hundred moments when Danny could have left his parents behind, for the moment or for good, and hadn’t.

“Thanks for never giving up on us,” Jack had told Phantom once. And Danny had answered, “Thanks for always being worth it.”

Jack swallowed hard and said, “He’s tried so hard to make this work. We have to try just as hard too.”

“We’ll hurt him,” Maddie said softly. “Even if we do the best we can, we’ll hurt him again. There’s no way we won’t.”

Jack … didn’t have a counterargument for that. She was right. He couldn’t predict exactly how they would hurt him, but they surely would. They hadn’t even managed to stop hurting him altogether when they’d allied with him. Between everything in their house that still needed fixing, every daily negotiation that might be a hidden minefield, everything they did by habit, everything they said by habit — how long would it even take for Jack to excise all the Ghost Escapades catchphrases and other anti-ghost taunts from his vocabulary?

Was keeping their family together really worth Danny suffering a thousand more hurts at their hands?

“Oh, you’re in here,” said a voice from behind them.

Jack spun around so quickly he felt dizzy. A dark figure stood in the room’s doorway, arms crossed. Valerie. The Red Huntress. Jack was still working on seeing them as the same person: he’d thought that the Red Huntress was at least in her twenties.

Jack felt Maddie straighten behind him. “Is something happening downstairs?” she asked, worriedly.

“Just lunch,” Valerie replied with a shrug. “Nothing you need to be there for. Though you should probably eat at some point; rewiring your worldview takes a lot of blood sugar. I just came up to check on you.”

Remembering the note that he’d retreated upstairs on, Jack asked, “Is Danny okay? With — with your dad?”

“Yeah, they’re fine. Dad was giving him one of his ‘being reckless with your own health and safety hurts the other people in your life’ lectures when I ducked out, which are never fun but aren’t exactly going to harm him.”

“What happened?” Maddie asked anxiously.

Valerie blinked. “Oh. You were already up here when we arrived, weren’t you?” she said, then shrugged again and continued without waiting for a response. “I revealed him to my dad to get back at him for revealing me to my dad. Would’ve done it ages ago if Jazz hadn’t guilted me into waiting until you guys knew. Didn’t end up being much of a show, but at least it was fun.”

Maddie’s arm, pressed against Jack’s, went stiff. “Is your dad going to tell anyone about —?”

Valerie was already shaking her head. “No, he won’t. A), because Phantom’s been doing pen-testing for my dad’s security systems and my dad’s loyal to a fault, and b) for the same reason you two shouldn’t tell on me: with as much as Sam and Tucker and Jazz have already been spotted fighting ghosts and the fact that we all hang together, no way does either Danny’s or my’s identity get out without someone at school figuring out the other, too.” Her expression was stern.

Maddie stiffened further at this news. “Do you think someone else at school already knows?”

“Eh, probably not,” said Valerie, relaxing enough to lean against the doorframe as the conversation went on. “They’re both pretty big leaps on their own, and teenagers are stupid.”

Jack frowned. “Aren’t you a teenager?”

“Yeah, and it took me until I’d seen two other half-ghosts transform to realize that Danny always showing up literally exactly where Phantom disappeared and vice versa might mean something, so.”

“There are others?!” Maddie exclaimed.

Valerie froze. “Oh. Uh … just a couple, as far as I know. You should ask Danny about them.”

Jack hadn’t even considered the possibility of other half-ghosts yet, and suddenly he had dozens of questions about that alone. How many other rabbit-hole side notes were they going to stumble into in the coming days? No wonder the kids had asked to space out their parents’ questioning.

Maddie swallowed audibly. Hesitantly, she asked Valerie, “Did Danny ask you to check on us?”

Oh. Good lord; had they hurt their son just by retreating to think about how to avoid further hurting him? Of course Danny would be anxious about their reactions as the news sank in. Should they have stayed downstairs?

Thankfully, Valerie shook her head. “Don’t worry about him. We can keep him distracted for a while longer. I mean, it’s why we’re here.”

“It is?” Jack asked, confused.

Valerie looked away. “Well … Jazz and I, at least, figured from personal experience that you would need some time to yourself to just process everything so you don’t get overwhelmed or do something drastic.”

Jack winced. “That’s not really working out, is it?” Debating sending Danny away definitely counted as “drastic.”

Valerie frowned.

“Jack,” Maddie admonished.

“Wait, seriously?” Valerie groaned. She ran her hands through her hair, pushing her bandana back in the process. “Look, please don’t do anything drastic. Ghost Boy’s insufferable enough as it is. I can go fetch my dad if you need to talk this out with someone. Or Jazz or the Foleys, but my dad probably has the most relevant experience. Talking stuff out is good.”

Jack blinked, then couldn’t help but smile a little. Revenge hadn’t been the real reason Valerie had brought her father here today, had it?

“We just want Danny to be safe,” Maddie started.

“Yeah, this is definitely a conversation for my dad,” Valerie decided, turning around.

“Wait, Valerie —” Maddie cut herself off, but Valerie turned around anyway.

Jack looked at his wife. Her hands were clenched together in her lap, and her bottom lip was pinched between her teeth. Taking a deep breath, she asked, “How did you deal with finding out?”

Valerie let out a long sigh. “Well, with a whole lot of yelling, at first,” she answered.

“Oh.” Maddie looked down, then back up. “But you stayed allies?”

“That’s when we became allies, actually. But we … stayed friends, I guess. Eventually became better friends.”

“Did you ever consider not doing that?”

Valerie studied them for a long moment before answering Maddie’s question with a nod. “Yeah; I considered it pretty strongly. But he, I mean, he trusted me, like he trusts you. What else was I supposed to do?”

Like he trusts you. Jack had known that Danny must still trust them, after every way he’d let them close to him this past month, but to hear that laid out so straightforwardly was … reaffirming. Or terrifying. He couldn’t tell which.

Maddie remained likewise silent, and after a few seconds, Valerie sighed.

“Look,” the unmasked Red Huntress told them. “It wasn’t nice, smooth sailing for us, and it probably won’t be for you. You’re gonna feel like crap for a long time. Danny won’t be mad at you even when he really should be, and that’ll drive you insane. You’re gonna get angry and you’re gonna get stuck in ‘I feel bad for making you feel bad’ loops with each other, and you’ll just have to push through them. But … you all love each other so much. I mean, that’s obvious to everyone who knows you. Things will work out fine.”

And Jack found himself believing her.

Whether Maddie did as well was less obvious. But at the very least, when Jack turned to study her face, she looked pensive rather than doubtful.

Valerie cleared her throat. “Really, though, should I fetch my dad for you? Talking about this stuff helps. I have no idea how I would’ve handled it all without Jazz.”

Maddie remained thoughtful and silent.

“Maybe in a little bit,” Jack answered for both of them, after a moment. “I, er, don’t think we’re about to do anything drastic after all.”

Slowly, Maddie nodded in agreement. Jack felt the tightness in his chest ease.

“Great. Well, in that case, I’m off to ransack the nachos again before the only ones left are the Daiya ones,” Valerie said. She threw them a very “Red Huntress” lazy salute as she turned. “See ya.”

Jack watched her go.

He didn’t feel Maddie move, but when he finished collecting his thoughts and looked back at her, he found her facing him again, studying his own face.

Jack swallowed. “We have to try, Maddie,” he repeated gently.

For all her stated misgivings, Maddie looked decisive, and relieved, when she nodded.

… … …

Dessert had been broken out by the time Jack came down. Everyone had congregated into one group in the living room, with chairs pulled from the kitchen and from their camping supplies to complete the circle formed by the armchair and couch. In contrast to the scattered and overlapping voices that Jack had heard making conversations earlier, the whole group now seemed to be following campfire rules: one speaker at a time with occasional low-voiced comments from the audience.

Currently, Tucker was telling everyone a story about the ghost named Desiree showing up in Amity Park while Danny, Tucker, and Sam were watching the newest Dead Teacher movie. Jack stopped partway down the stairs, not wanting his arrival to cut the story short.

“— So finally, we get him to calm down enough to tell us what the last thing he remembers before the theater is, and we figure out that he was reading those knockoff comic books and wished he was Danny Phantom,” said Tucker.

“I still can’t believe they’re allowed to make those comics without even consulting me,” Danny grumbled.

Tucker went on, “And now we have a problem, right? Not only do we have to deal with Desiree and with Danny’s Freaky Friday situation, but we have to somehow keep this kid from figuring out Danny’s secret identity. And that’s when we realize —”

“When I realize,” Sam corrected.

“— That Danny’s pun name is an ace in the hole. Because what’s easier to believe than the town ghost hero secretly being alive? The ghost whose wish-granting keeps causing everyone problems being hard of hearing!”

Tucker paused, and several chuckles and appreciative “Ah!”s sounded around the room. Maurice put in proudly, “You kids have gotten good at thinking on your feet, eh?”

“Is that kind of thing likely to happen again?” asked Damon.

Silverware clinked against plates in the background, several people returning to their food.

“I’ve been making progress with Desiree,” Jazz told Damon. “She’s … starting to understand that most people have multiple heart’s desires throughout their lives, so living to see several of them fulfilled is better than getting their most recent desire at the possible cost of their life.”

“So we’re hoping she’ll stop messing with us, but nothing’s certain,” Valerie translated this.

“And that’s why you should change your hero name to Gray Valkyrie,” said Danny. Jack took a few more steps down so he could see the room, now that the story seemed to be over. Danny was sitting on the left side of the couch, with Sam and Tucker filling the rest of it, and facing towards the fold-out camping chair where Valerie sat. He looked to have changed shirts into one that was half-black and half-white. A bowl balanced precariously by his elbow on the couch’s armrest.

“Absolutely not,” said Valerie. She looked up. “Oh, hey, Jack.”

“Dad!” Danny turned around, lifting his bowl up as he did. He smiled. “You’ve gotta try this cake with our fudge. It tastes amazing.”

Jack studied his son, smiling in return. Whatever “distract Danny” efforts the rest of the Ghost Getters had been making seemed to be working well. Danny looked content and mostly relaxed, just a hint of tension in his shoulders as he shoveled in another spoonful of ice cream cake and fudge.

“It sounds like I should!” Jack agreed.

“I’ll get the cake back out of the freezer,” Danny offered, hopping to his feet before anyone else could do the same. He hurried off to the kitchen with his own bowl in his hands, calling back, “Anyone else want seconds of anything while I’m up?”

“I’ll take whatever’s left of the slow-roast casserole once your parents get some!” Tucker answered, while everyone else uttered some variation of “No thank you” or “I’m stuffed.”

Jack followed after Danny. The kitchen table had largely been cleared of food, making room for Jack’s Ghost Zone Monopoly board. The game pieces were collected together but not yet put away. There must have been a round of the game between lunch and dessert, which had probably been what had started everyone’s sharing stories about their past ghostly misadventures. Jack was disappointed to have missed it.

Playing a group game where Danny got to share his Ghost Zone knowledge must have been pretty effective at holding his attention. Someone had to have planned that in advance. Between that, Valerie’s plot to loop in her dad, Sam’s prepared threats, and the Foleys’ slow-roast casserole … “I guess everyone prepared for today, huh?”

“Huh?” Danny echoed, stepping back from the freezer with the cake box in his hands. The freezer door swung shut. “Did you guys make plans? I didn’t even tell you where we’d be going.”

Danny set the cake box on a counter and turned around, and Jack finally got a good look at his shirt.

The boundary between the black and white portions was a straight vertical line down the middle. Over it, in stitched-on lettering that changed color from white to black as it passed the central line — with the A in the second word even being half-white and half-black — were the words, “SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT ISN’T SPECIAL.”

Jack couldn’t quite hold back a laugh.

Danny looked down. “Oh, yeah,” he said, smiling fondly as he explained, “Sam and Tucker wanted to see if it fit.”

“Definitely fits you, huh?” said Jack.

Danny grinned. “And right out of the box, too.”

Jack almost protested that Tucker had brought it in a bag before he caught the joke. He snorted.

Danny’s grin widened.

“You all been having fun down here?” Jack asked.

Danny nodded. “Yeah. I was actually thinking …” He trailed off uncertainly, and Jack hummed encouragingly. “Well, maybe we could do something like this again for my birthday this year?”

Jack blinked. “Tell a whole bunch of people that you’re Phantom?”

Danny laughed. “Ancients, no. I just meant getting together everyone who already knows. Without three of you being totally shocked this time.”

Which meant they could all play Ghost Zone Monopoly. “That sounds like a plan to me!” said Jack.

Danny visibly relaxed. Jack frowned, wondering what about the suggestion had made Danny feel nervous, before he realized that it implied their family would be planning and celebrating Danny’s birthday like normal, that everything would be the same a month from now.

Danny fetched a clean bowl and spoon for his father. “What did you prepare for today, by the way?” he asked again.

“Oh. Just research summaries to back you up, and, uh, ghost care and keeping notes for if things went well,” Jack admitted. Danny snorted and shot him a smile over his shoulder, which encouraged Jack enough to add, “And adoption papers for if they didn’t.”

Danny paused, his bowl-laden hand coming to a stop several inches above the counter. The air seemed to still.

“You — actually?” Danny asked, his voice quieting.

“Er, yeah,” Jack answered, wondering if he shouldn’t have mentioned it after all. Maybe Danny felt bad about their going to the trouble? “Nothing, y’know, rightly legal, just an agreement like for our alliance. But a bit shorter.”

Danny turned to him. The bowl settled, forgotten, on the counter next to the cake. “Can I see it?”

Jack didn’t answer at first, too busy trying to decipher his son’s expression. Not humor, although there was humor in it. Definitely interest, but something deeper, too. Desperation? No, that wasn’t quite it …

After a few seconds, Danny’s shoulders slumped. “Or, uh, nevermind. Obviously you don’t need it. I was just curious.”

“No, you can see it if you want!” Jack assured him. “I left it back upstairs.”

Danny brightened enough at the offer that the only thing Jack could do was turn to the stairs to fetch it. He didn’t realize until Danny called out, “Just have to look at something real quick!” to the living room that Danny was following him.

Jack climbed. He was pretty sure he’d left the folders on his and Maddie’s bed, but he didn’t remember seeing them there when he’d emerged from the bathroom, after Valerie’s check-in. Maddie was in their room, though, actually freshening up now: face newly washed, hair being fixed and lipstick being reapplied. She might know where the folders had gone. She gave Jack a rhubarb-red smile when he appeared, then blinked as their son entered the room behind him. Her eyebrows drew slightly together, but her smile softened.

“He wanted to see the papers,” Jack explained to his wife.

“Which pape—? Oh!” Maddie retrieved the two folders from atop the dresser. She must have moved them earlier to clear up space for her and Jack to lie back and stare at the ceiling. (At least they hadn’t done that in the dark: the window blinds were open now, letting in the afternoon sun.)

Maddie handed the folders to Danny, and Danny flipped through them. Jack thumbed the tops of the papers in the green one until he found the thickest page and pulled it partway out of its folder.

Danny noticed immediately. “Why is there a whole row of fleur-de-lis at the top?” He squinted. “Wait, are there ghost figures inside all the fleur-de-lis?”

“Thought I should fancy it up!” Jack explained. He felt oddly nervous. Surely his border decorations weren’t excessive, right? And Maddie had told him the content of the agreement looked good. And they didn’t need the agreement in order to be family anyway, like Danny had said.

Danny pulled that page the rest of the way out. He sank slowly onto the edge of the big bed as he read, like sitting down was an afterthought. Maddie smoothed her hair in the mirror one more time and turned to watch him, her eyes widening as she realized which document it was.

Maddie closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head to herself. Jack wondered if she was feeling the sense of hypocrisy about freaking out over whether they deserved to be Phantom’s parents earlier, when they hadn’t worried too much over it before they’d known that Danny was the ghost in question. It’s not about what we deserve, Jack almost wanted to remind her anyway, but when she opened her eyes again, her expression was one of equanimity, so Jack let it be.

“‘Obligations?’” Danny read out curiously. “What sort of … ‘At least occasional, but preferably regular, participation in family bonding activities like family dinners, family game nights and movie nights, and family excursions on one side or the other of the portal, as long as the trip avoids any humans or ghosts who might hurt anyone. Willingness to learn about each other’s traditions and try doing them together, like fudge-making or ghost Holiday Truce parties. Eventual introduction to more extended family, including Alicia Walton and Danielle Phantom, as long as everyone involved okays it …’ You guys have, um. Really thought about how to incorporate me into the family, huh? And … and listened.” He stared at the paper as if he feared it might disappear if he blinked.

“That’s in the agreement, too,” Jack told him. “I thought I put it higher up, actually.”

Danny drew a shaky breath. “Yeah. Yeah, you did. ‘To both seek out and offer support,’ wait, no, above that, ‘To do our best to listen and communicate and have each other’s backs in every aspect of day-to-day existence, not just ghost hunting.’ You, heh, did you actually want all that? Before you knew?”

Jack sat down beside him. “‘Course we did, kiddo,” he said. “I kept havin’ to remind myself that what we wanted was for everything to go well with your family, ‘cause I wanted so badly to bring you home instead! And look how lucky I am, getting both.”

Danny put his face in his hands. Jack assumed the gesture was to hide either laughter or embarrassment about how his and Maddie’s assumptions about Phantom’s family had missed the mark, but when Maddie asked in a concerned voice, “Danny?,” Danny’s breath hitched and he wiped his eyes with the base of his thumb.

“S-sorry,” Danny stuttered. “I, uh. I guess I spent too long thinking that the whole Phantom thing was at least gonna be a drawback for you. It just … still kind of surprises me that you want that? Or, I mean, more-than-accept it. I know you’ve said that before, sort of, just …” His breath hitched again.

“Oh, moonbeam.” Maddie settled on Danny’s opposite side.

Danny blinked at the address, peering first down at his currently very human-looking body, then up at his mother.

Maddie looked away from him for just a moment and gave Jack a slow nod of reassurance and understanding, a quiet, I’ve been listening to you. Then she turned her eyes back. When she spoke, she spoke carefully, holding her son’s gaze. “I need you to know, we don’t ever want to trap you here, and if you say that you’d rather leave, we’ll do everything we can to make that happen for you. But we’ll always, always want you here. Every part of you. For just as long as you want to stay.”

Danny swallowed hard, and when he said, “I want to stay,” he sounded as certain as he would be naming the largest basaltic plane on the Moon.

And Maddie hugged him with no hesitation at all.

Jack followed suit. My son. My family. Mine. They were going to find their way forward, somehow. The warm certainty of it settled in his chest. “I want to stay.” Their little half-ghost was right where he belonged, and just like the Red Huntress had said, everything would work out fine.

A minute or two later, Danny jolted upright in their arms. “I left the ice cream cake out on the counter!” he remembered.

Jack loosened his hug but didn’t yet withdraw it. “Sounds like we should go have some, then, eh?”

“Definitely,” Danny agreed. He looked to Maddie. “Are you coming down, Mom? You really have to try the cake with our fudge.”

Maddie studied him, then smiled. “Sky ice cream and Fenton fudge, hm?” she said with extra emphasis. Leaving one arm looped around their son’s shoulders, she dropped the other and poked him in the abdomen, near his central core.

“Hey!” Danny huffed in protest.

“Sounds like a perfect combination,” Maddie concluded.

Jack caught what she meant a moment later. He laughed. What food better described a sweet-natured ice core ghost than ice cream? And there was nothing more Fenton than Fenton fudge.

“I can’t wait to see how they work together,” said Jack.

“Then come on,” Danny told them, waving them forward, and his parents followed him down to dessert.