Chapter Text
Jazz wishes Danny good luck at the haunted house before turning in for the night. She wakes up the next morning not thinking much about the lack of Danny. If it were a late night, he might have crashed at Sam's house. Or maybe he is busy as Phantom at the haunted house. Not ideal, he did still have school, but Jazz would allow it.
It's when she's brewing tea that the frantic knocking on the door starts. Jazz cranes her neck to look out the kitchen window at a familiar group of people on the doorstep.
Something falls from Jazz's mouth to her stomach. There's faint noises from the lab – Jazz yanks out the door and yells for her parents to come upstairs – before heading toward the door.
It's Pamela Manson knocking. Sam is with her, as is Jeremy, but it's the haunted look in Pamela's eyes that Jazz can't turn away from once they're standing awkwardly near the shoe pile.
"I'm sorry," she sobs.
Sam fills Jazz in just as Jack and Maddie enter hearing range.
"The haunted house was a ghost trap between Natalia Silvers and the GIW. They took everyone. Including Danny."
"I'm sorry," Pamela sobs again. "I didn't know. I didn't know! And they just shoved them tighter and tighter-"
She hiccups. Jeremy pushes her toward the Fenton couch and Maddie is already scrambling to play hostess, getting Pamela water.
Jazz looks at Sam. Not even eight in the morning and her mascara is ruined. "I told my parents about Danny, Phantom," she whispers. "As soon as Mom told me what happened, and I realized what that meant, I just…it slipped out."
Jazz pulls her into a hug. "It's okay. If my parents handled that reveal, yours can too. It's okay."
They all know the real topic of distress: not that Danny is Phantom, but that Danny is in GIW hands.
The pit that dropped in Jazz's stomach stays there. Sam texts Tucker, and it isn't right for his parents to be the only ones not in the know, so the Foleys are brought into the fold. Only now everyone has all this awful information in their head. Sam and Tucker's parents keep asking for detail Jazz's parents can only half provide. No one can answer all the questions about Danny's status and health. No one can answer all the questions about the GIW's motivation, reasoning, and power. No one can answer any questions about why Natalia is working with the GIW.
No one can even ask what's happening to Danny and the other ghosts.
There's a lot of sitting on couches, holding hands, staring at the floor, starts and stops of conversation.
It's not good, they're spiraling, and Jazz pushes herself to do something. She makes the most elaborate lunch she ever has, both because of the number of people and the complexity of the recipe, but it feels good to do something. You need to channel your despair into action, or it will swallow you.
The GIW haven't been that serious a threat before now. Or at least, Jazz hasn't considered them as such. With bad aim, ridiculous rules, and very little public support due to a rampant disrespect for property and people, the GIW have been more annnoyances than anything else. Their biggest risk had been of a political nature – the funding and power behind them that enabled the digital blackout around Amity Park and the passing of the Ecto-Acts. No one believed them capable of actually capturing Phantom, not after seeing him take out powerful ghosts.
They hadn't been able to without a pretty elaborate trap. Jazz wishes Pamela had spent an extra ten thousand setting up that fake haunted house.
It hadn't even been a trap for Phantom. Pamela would have accepted any ghostly aid, but Phantom volunteered. The GIW would certainly take advantage of having him in their grasp.
They eat Jazz's lunch in silence. It's bland; they'd been light on soy sauce, but everyone is eating mechanically anyway. They've exhausted their conversations, and thrice now Sam has tossed the Boo-marang in the front yard, only for it to come right back to her. Considering that could track Danny in the Ghost Zone, with all the ambient ectoplasm and its infinite nature, Jazz has taken that to mean Danny's at a GIW facility that has some heavy shielding.
It means she can't track her brother. Can't find him. Can't help him.
The Mansons and Foleys go home shortly after lunch. Until they have a plan, there's no use sitting around FentonWorks. The world is still turning, there's work and school.
Pamela has a new fire in her belly, something that Jazz has not seen before. By the end of the day, Pamela informed all of Amity that the rumors of a ghostly haunted house were true, but it'd been a trap by the GIW. That they need to demand Springfield dismantle the GIW.
It doesn't help Danny, but neither does the fifty times Jazz throws the Boo-merang after dinner.
Jazz's parents lock themselves in the basement. Jazz tries to lock in at school, but for once, she can't focus. What's her future college to the status of her little brother's safety? It doesn't help that the high school is full of rumors. Pamela Manson has joined the family hobby of activism, and a few bold teens have gone out to the warehouse and reported back that she's telling the truth.
There are a few who praise the GIW for their actions, thankful for a mass roundup of ghosts. There have not been any of the regular visitors since that night. There are a few who think it's wrong, ghosts and humans under Phantom's leadership had been heading toward a peaceful coexistence. The GIW turned what was supposed to be a proof of a harmonious living into a cruel trap.
Most are just silent. Happy the ghost attacks stopped, and Amity Park can go back to being a normal Midwest town, unsettled by the GIW but not enough to take action.
Especially because the GIW disappear too.
Oh, Jazz sees a white van occasionally, but nowhere near the frequency she had in the previous month. They'd gotten what they wanted, for now.
Four days after Danny's kidnapping, her parents reveal an updated version of the Boo-merang.
"We're not sure it'll work," Maddie admits. "We didn't make it more powerful, our microwave was too weak, but based on current tech in blocking ectoplasm readings, we added a workaround. Short range, fifty miles, but-"
"But if Danny is within fifty miles of us when we throw it, it'll find him!"
Jack tosses it out the kitchen window. It returns to his hand.
Tucker carefully carries a box of raw extoplasm to the back of the GAV. "You sure about this?"
"I'm not sitting at home while my parents go chasing after Danny."
"What about school?"
"I sent my last college admission essay last night." They were due before the end of November anyway, and Jazz's senior year is mostly a series of independent study and AP classes. As long as she keeps up with classwork online and passes the AP exams, her performance this year shouldn't prevent her from getting into a good university.
"Check in daily. Please." Sam looks exhausted as she carefully places Danny's backpack under a folded-out seat.
"Of course."
Jazz takes one last look around the GAV. It's well stocked, ghostly medical supplies, as well as obsession aids. They don't know what condition they'll find Danny, but the family RV is ready to be car, hotel, and hospital if they need it.
"We'll take the Speeder tonight," Tucker says. "Just cuz our parents know about Danny doesn't mean they know how involved we were in ghost hunting. And I'd rather keep that from them."
Sam snorts. "I don't think my parents would care. It's nice to see Mom passionate about ghost rights, she'd love to visit the Ghost Zone. I just…don't want her with when we tell Frostbite. She still feels so guilty, and she'd just make it awkward."
Tucker nudges her shoulder, Sam bumps him back. Pamela's not the only one feeling guilty; Sam and Tucker planned that haunted house, too. Jazz doesn't say anything. Just because she's good at reading emotions doesn't mean everyone wants her help with them. Danny has no choice as her little brother, but Sam and Tucker aren't quite friends.
"Let me know if anything changes in Amity? Ghosts show up, the GIW activity level changes, Red Huntress disappears, anything."
"We will," Sam promises.
"Ready to go, Jazz?"
Jazz looks over to her mom, standing on the sidewalk with Jack and Maurice Foley. Tucker's father is the more technical of the adults in the know, and so has been designated the keeper of FentonWorks while they're gone. Jazz is positive Tucker will have his own copy of the keys by the end of the day, if he doesn't already.
Jazz presses her lips together and looks up at the house. Danny's window faces the street. The blue curtains are closed. Everyone in town believes him seriously sick, and the Fenton's depature a trip to a speciality hospital. It's better than the alternative – that Amity Park knows he's Phantom.
Next time she comes home, her brother will be with her.
"Yeah, Mom, I'm ready."
The resucue roadtrip is slow going. Their only clue is Natalia Slivers, so Maddie plots a weaving course between Amity Park and Gotham that goes by any plausible location for a secret government building. Every forty miles, they pull over and toss the Boo-merang, hoping it doesn't return, but it always does. It's been nearly two weeks since the GIW took Danny, and the short range of the Boo-merang modification means they don't cover nearly as much ground as Jazz wants.
It's in their second week of driving, three since the haunted house, that a miracle happens.
They get a call from Danny's birth father.
They get a second call, from Danny's twin, and with it a photo of Danny. Jazz can't stop staring at the blurry image. Danny's not healthy, but he's alive and safe, and in less than two days, Jazz can hug her baby brother again.
"Who is it?" Maddie asks as she turns the back of a GAV into a hospital suite. Jack is hunched over, holding Danny to his chest. Jazz cranks up the transparency on the GAV windows, then hurries to help her mother.
"The quartet at least," Jazz answers, already pulling up a jazz playlist on her phone. Sam slipped Jazz Danny's list of all the ghosts who volunteered for the haunted house.
As the sound of a saxophone filled the GAV, Danny let out a sigh.
The GIW have clean suits but dirty knives.
That's what Danny had said over the phone. How many ghosts had they cut into? How many ghostly obsessions were whispering in Danny's ear?
Did it matter?
Not now, but it would later.
Jack covers the lab table with a thick blanket as he holds Danny in one arm. Maddie jerks it smooth and helps Jack lay Danny on it. He's pale and running human normal – feverish for him. There's scars on his wrists, and where his shirt has pulled up, Jazz can see the neat line of stitching. He doesn't protest as Jack peels Danny's shirt fully off, just leans into Jazz's hand brushing away his hair.
"You're Danny, you're in the GAV," she whispers, doing her best to not look at Danny's chest. There's only the one injury, but there are many faint pink lines of healed scars. His healing factor and shape-changing at work.
Three weeks. The GIW had him for three weeks.
Jazz stays by Danny's head, allowing her parents to work around her and gather the necessary equipment. They'd talked through what Danny might need with Frostbite, via Sam, last night, and having a plan has cut down on Jack asking questions and Maddie searching for where things are stashed.
Jazz bends over, pressing her forehead against her brother's. He's warm. He's breathing. He's free and alive.
Danny whimpers. "There's so many, Jazz."
"Who is it?" Maddie asks again.
A walking bass line fills the GAV as they watch Danny take in a lungful of air, the tears forming on his face. "Too many, they whisper, and they want and I-" the tears fall, trailing a path from his eyes to his ears. "I don't know all of them."
The majority of ghosts who had signed up to work the haunted house were Deseased excited at a chance to explore the living realm. Danny's list had named them all, but he'd also grouped them. The quartet. Students from the Zone's version of Casper Higher. Wanderers, curious about the hullabaloo.
The only names Jazz recognized had been Ember, Skulker, the Box Ghost, and Sydney Pointdexter.
Other than Phantom, they'd been the most powerful too.
"I couldn't save any of them."
Danny hums off-key the chorus to Remember and Jazz can't help the tears in her own eyes. "Oh, Danny."
"Can I, can I hold a box?"
Jack gently puts a juice box in Danny's hand.
"It, it felt silly. To ask Damian. He wouldn't get it."
Jazz brushes her fingers over Danny's cheeks, still forehead to forehead with him. She can't look at their parents. She's not sure they get it either. Danny shared his secret three months ago, and there's still a lot they're unlearning and relearning. Never their love of Danny, but ghosts and obsessions and ectoplasm. They also didn't know the ghosts that came through the portal, not as people. Not as Danny knew them, and Jazz was learning to.
The jazz music continues; Danny taps along with his feet, knocking his toes together. "They all want so much, and I want to give it to them."
"I know, little brother. But that's not healthy for you."
Danny's own core would eventually force the ectoplasm in his body to sync to it, erasing the remnants of the other ghosts. But the only one willing to risk his core like that, to force him to hear the obsessions of those he failed, is Danny. They need to purge him of the contaminated ectoplasm, remove the stress on his core. Danny always wants, needs, to save people. But when there's no one left? It's time to let go.
Jazz keeps hold of Danny's face. "Danny?"
"Hm?"
"Can you transform for me?"
"The GIW-"
"Are not here, okay? But we can help you faster as Phantom, okay?"
Danny nods. The white transformation rings are smaller, narrower, and when he settles into his ghost form, he looks different. His skin has a bluer tinge, there's a mechanical bracer on his arm. His black suit is more grey, his hair flat like it spent days under a beanie.
Even like this, he's warm in Jazz's hand, but that's secondary to how Danny doesn't seem to have his nose anymore. His widow's peak is gone. Ghosts are constructed forms, guided by the personally charged ectoplasm from their core. And Danny's has been contaminated over and over again.
The GIW have dirty knives.
"Danny, remember I love you. Mom, Dad."
Maddie and Jack move into action, ectoline and cuffs pinning Danny to the table.
He starts fighting immediately, eyes wide with panic. Ectoblasts sputter in his palms.
"It's Jazz. I love you. You're in the GAV. It's just a precaution."
She holds Danny's head still. His eyes are frantic and she knows he's not seeing her anymore. He wiggles and Jazz moves with him, blocking the view of what their parents are doing to him. They talked about this on the frantic drive to Gotham, their understanding of ghost biology, Jazz's understanding of cores and obsessions.
There's no knives. Just needles as her parents set up an ectoplasm draw.
Danny tries to go intangible. Pleas spill from his lips. "No, no, please. Please, don't."
Maddie raises the volume of the jazz music in an attempt to show him he's not in a GIW facility.
"You're fine, Danny. You escaped the GIW. You found your twin, remember? And then we found you and we're gonna get rid of those voices, okay? We're gonna make you feel better."
"No, please. Don't, don't."
Jazz risks a look. Jack has ripped off Danny's glove, holding the fabric up with one hand keep his arm still with the other. Maddie set ups the IV line, whispering platitudes, and directs the open line into a bucket at her feet. The ectoplasm flowing out of Danny looks no different than any other Jazz has seen – green, glowing, and the viscosity of runny ketchup.
"Please," Danny begs, and something about his tone makes Jazz snap her attention back to him. He's staring at the tubing, eyes oddly lucid even as his voice sounds far away. "Don't take them from me."
Jazz presses her cheek to Danny's, filling his gaze with sweaty red hair. "I'm sorry," she whispers. "I'm sorry, but it's for the best. Frostbite said so."
"Frostbite?"
"Sam talked to him for us. This isn't tortue Danny, it's treatment. I promise."
Jazz can feel Danny tremble. This close, she swears she can feel Danny's core thrum like a panicked human heart. It doesn't beat, but vibrates all the same.
"They're so loud," Danny whispers.
How many ghosts had the GIW cut into with the same knife? How many ectosignatures had mixed with Danny's? All twenty ghosts captured? Were any of them still around?
Jazz guesses no. Danny would have broken them out if they were. Wouldn't cling so hard to the last whisper of them.
"I know, I know."
"I don't want to lose them."
"I know, I know."
Danny's struggles lessen.
"One pint," Maddie says softly.
Ectoplasm is close enough to blood in this case. Lose too much and a ghost becomes woozy, confused, weak, and unable to access their powers. Eventually, they retreat into their core, unable to keep their form.
Danny feels suddenly fragile in Jazz's arms. Phantom's glow is dimmer, his wrist and neck a little thinner, as if he's lost so much ectoplasm he can't keep his normal shape. He blinks up at Jazz, confused.
"You're Danny Phantom," she tells him. "And I'm your sister, Jazz. We're in the GAV. Mom and Dad are gonna make you feel better."
"H-how?"
"We'll give you a bit of an ecto-boost, sweetie." Maddie squeezes Danny's forearm. "Fresh ectoplasm will make you feel better."
"One point five," Jack says.
Halfas are always a medical surprise, Frostbite said, but they're pushing the limits of human biology. Adults get into dangerous territory after losing 2.5 pints of blood, children less so, but as a ghost Danny is nothing but ectoplasm. Two pints is their planned limit.
Maddie scrambles around the table to Danny's thighs. The Ecto-Dejecto vials Jazz pulled out earlier are on the seat next to the table. Maddie uses one to fill a needle, then places a hand on Danny's thigh, needle poised a few inches above.
"Two!"
Jack pulls out the needle and tube drawing ectoplasm, pressing his thumb on the wound to stop the bleeding. Maddie jabs the Ecto-Dejecto into Danny's thigh. She waits seven seconds, then administers a second one.
Danny jolts against the restraints as if given an adrenaline shot, eyes snapping to Jazz's.
"Jazz?"
"I'm here." She pets her brother's face. The white strands aren't quite as fluffy as usual, but a bit of bounce has returned. His glow is marginally better.
"I, you." His hands hit the juice box, and he stills. His fingers twitch toward it, but he doesn't try to grasp it. His skin is still on the blue side, and his new tech accessory remains. But his eyes are the most alert Jazz has seen, his fever breaking.
"You with me?"
"Yes, I-" Danny tries to twist to his right. He stares at Jack for a second, who gives him a watery smile, then looks at the bucket at his feet.
"Can you, can you separate them by ectosignature?"
Jack winces. "Sorry, Danno. It doesn't work like that."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah."
A soft beep fills the GAV. "Ten minutes till the Waynes come knocking," Maddie says. "Danny, sweetie, I'm sorry, but can you tell me what they know? Do they know Phantom?"
"Just that the GIW had me. But Damian saw my ectoblasts."
"I'll hold them off," Jazz says.
Let her parents quiz Danny, let them hold him and brush his hair back, and deal with the grief of reminding him what happens to charged ecto away from a core. Danny needs his parents more than his big sister, even though it aches to leave him behind.
But she's got a maybe new little brother now. And he deserves the answers he was promised.