Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Did Danny believe in ghosts?

No.

Did that mean he didn’t care that his parents were disheartened about their latest version of the Fenton Ghost Portal?

Also no.

His opinions as a 14-year-old might not matter much in the house when it came to things like their parents’ goal of proving their life’s work was worth it, but he didn’t think his sister’s attitude at the most recent failure was warranted. 

Currently he’s resting at the table listening to her rant about their parents’ life choices in the kitchen. Again. She doesn’t call it ranting, but Danny’s long learned that even though there’s another name for something, it doesn’t mean it’s not also what it is. He half listens to her passionate retelling of how their parents’ work makes them “neglectful” and “self-centered” as his eyes trace the little intertwined boomerang designs in the table up close. She needles her opinions on their work into conversation casually all the time, but occasionally she blows up like this too where there’s nothing to do but sit as a captive audience. 

“I mean, it’s summer! We’re out of school and they work from home, but how much have we actually seen of them before this latest failure?” 

Danny knows better than to interrupt at the rant-stage of her ‘communication process’, especially when hands are flying, but he’s on the fence about that one. Sure, they’re a little hard to get attention from, but aren’t you the one who said two years ago that paying attention to others’ passions helps forge deeper connections? After she had told him that, he got more involved with their parents’ work in order to spend time with them. He can’t say he’s all that interested in ghosts still, that ship sailed a long time ago, but the transferable aspects of their work are interesting enough. He doesn’t know anything about biology, but his mom had taken him out to get certified in first aid and CPR after he showed an interest when she had to re-up her certifications, even taking him to get SCUBA certified when he mentioned it. It was pretty nice bonding to him and he got certifications that would help him as an astronaut, so he counted it as a win. His dad’s inventions were bogus for the most part, largely impractical or redesigns of things that already exist that he had slapped their names on, but watching him work as he tried to explain why and what he was doing has been cool and pretty helpful for the robotics competition he and Tucker had entered in the last couple school years. 

He’s still not supposed to tell “the girls” that they’ve been out driving and flying in the Ops Center though.

After the third repeat of something in her rant catches his notice, Danny gets up and starts shuffling around the kitchen to make some tea. Jazz repeating herself without outside influence usually means she’s winding down to where she’ll want to actually talk, and that means a drink and something to snack on, and Jazz’s preference for the first was something warm and usually whatever tea is in the cupboard. It’s when she calms down that she drops the swallowed-a-textbook speech and dumbs things down to where he can pick it up easier. 

After a few years of her fighting with them over this you would think he would understand more of the words or something, but it still is not sinking in. Then again, she’s still diving into psychology whereas Danny largely prefers tangible science. It would also be easier for her to connect with them if their parents put more stock in the ‘soft sciences’, but generally they say it “doesn’t matter” when it comes to ghosts “because ghosts aren’t human, kids”. Danny’s still confused about that, but anytime he’s asked his parents about that before, they get really technical and particular, mostly flying over his head, so eventually he quit asking. 

As he sets things down on the table she takes a seat, sighing deeply as she seems to wilt into the chair. “And now with them gone I can’t go to that college tour with my friends.” She grabs hold of the sugar dish and spoons some in. 

Oh right, that was this weekend, wasn’t it? This past week their parents have been like ghosts themselves around the house, listlessly lying around over their latest portal flop, not even touching the lab door. Dad hadn’t even touched his needlepoint like he usually would on the rare occasions of avoiding the lab. They left this morning to do… something. Danny can’t quite remember what they said when they were heading out the door in an recently unusual flurry, but he thinks he spotted camping gear. They don’t fly the coop after every failure because “nothing would get done! You can’t pioneer science if you leave it too long!”, but when it comes to the portal their reactions have always been…bigger. “If it’s your friends and their parents then why can’t you still? Mom and Dad weren’t chaperoning y’all, so it should be fine.” He knows it was a big trip for her, but he can’t see why this would disrupt that. 

Jazz looks at him like he’s lost his head. “I can’t leave you at home alone. That’s stupid. But there’s not really room in the trip for you to come, even if you’d just be bored during it, so I have to be the responsible adult here and stay back to watch you.”

Ah. So it’s my fault. He doesn’t dare say that though because she’ll be shooting off again about guilt and blaming and maybe a few other paths he doesn’t care to go down today. “I’ll be fine,” Danny tries to assure her with as much confidence as he can muster. 

Jazz’s eyes are wide as she sets her mug down harshly. “Danny, you’re fourteen. You can’t be left home alone all weekend, it’s too dangerous!”

Aside from when I’m left alone regularly at any other point even with them here? “Jazz, I’ll be fine. It’s not like I’m eight or live in Chicago or something. All I’ll probably be doing is playing games with Tuck or going to the YMCA anyway if you were here, so you might as well go on your dumb college tour trip.”

For as much as she plays an adult and rants about parentification, he knows that the argument sways her a lot when she doesn’t say anything right away. He patiently waits it out as he can almost see her making a pros and cons list in her head. By the time she comes back his tea is lukewarm where it’s mostly drained. “I’d be hours away if some were to happen here.”

“You could check in too?” He offers, knowing she’s likely thought of it anyway. The echo would likely reassure her and make it stick more. “I’d just be a phone call away and Tucker’s house is just down the road,” he adds. “You know their number as well as you do ours, so it wouldn’t be hard.” 

Her eyes light up and he can almost see the idea shuttling into her mind. “You could stay at Tucker’s!”

Danny shakes his head. “Nah, his aunt is in town, so it’d be a bit crowded to stay over there. I’d invite him over to free up space for them if Mom and Dad were home. And before you mention it, no, I wouldn’t be welcome at Sam’s; her parents aren’t too fond of Mom and Dad’s work.” Danny swallows the rest of his cooled tea with a grimace, the temperature solidly in-between and slightly nasty. “Did they say when they’d be back? I can’t remember them mentioning it.”

“I don’t know.” Jazz thinks back to their parents' sudden departure. “Tuesday maybe? They didn’t say much other than mentioning Duluth, but who knows if that’s where they are.”

“Minnesota? Huh.” Danny squints as he tries to picture a map. “That’s what, six hours?”

“Eight at least, so it’d take forever for them to get back if something did happen.” The ‘if they can be reached at all’ hangs there. 

“Nothing will happen.”

“You can’t promise that, Danny.”

“And you can’t assume everything will go wrong if given the chance. At most I’d probably sprain something at the YMCA trying out something. Still wouldn’t change if you were here.” 

“You’ve now jinxed it!” She gasps mockingly and they laugh. 

Jazz does agree to it in the end, and she leaves as scheduled for a long weekend away for the tour after he practically promises his left kidney to her to stay safe and not talk to strangers. 

The day she leaves goes just how he tells her it would: he goes and plays around at the YMCA with the usual summer weekday crowd before heading home and playing some games with Tucker online in the lab. He gets offline when Tucker does for supper and heats up some mac and cheese in the microwave to eat. 

When he’s eating at the table though, he takes in how quiet it really is in the house. 

Sure, he’s alone a lot at home, but usually there’s someone somewhere making noise. Danny’s just sinking into that feeling of alone-ness when he is startled by the phone. “Fenton Residence?” He answers and is relieved to hear Jazz on the other end. He stretches the cord around a chair and sits down at the table to finish eating as she recaps her day. When he’s done eating, he squashes the phone with his neck to hold it in place at his ear to wash his bowl and grab a coke before reciprocating. He does mention the quiet and she seems shocked that he isn’t using this opportunity to crank up his tunes around the house. “You could be blasting anything right now and no one would care! Or well, maybe the neighbours, but that’s a easy enough to watch for. Be a teen, Danny; blast some music!” Danny takes it into consideration, and they hang up shortly after when she reminds him to lock the doors. After checking all the doors and windows the quiet rears its head again and Danny takes Jazz’s advice, slipping a CD into the DVD player to play over the speakers and disrupt it. Danny zones out for a few songs before his mind steers him back to his parents when the lab door catches his eye. 

Over the years there have been many demonstrations in ectoplasm, their inventions, and their prized portal they’re making in the basement since they moved to Amity Park in second grade. He feels lucky he made friends with Tucker so soon after they arrived with the way people started whispering over their parents’ work on ghosts in town after the sign went up out front. It was hard for anyone to take their parents seriously, and with people ridiculing their work it was a toss-up how they talked to the kids of the ‘mad scientists’, even worse when the neighbourhood couldn’t get their parents to not build the Ops Center, even with the city council. 

Jazz gets irritated and embarrassed on behalf of their parents (who seemed to not care how they were seen overall), but she does well for herself anyway as the genius psych prodigy who’s been acing AP and dual-credit classes since her freshman year at Casper High. Danny mostly slides under the radar, not bringing up anything supernatural related and not engaging in the topic when it gets connected to his parents’ work since he hears enough about it at home. Most people don’t really connect him with them unless his last name is brought into the conversation. There’s not many Fentons in Amity Park and their home was… unconventional looking enough to be used as a local landmark, but it wasn’t like he talked to a lot of people who didn’t politely ignore the orange and teal elephants in the room. 

Danny thinks about the last week and a half as he stares at the door. His parents are confident about their work and tell them how the doubters would laugh when they were proven right, and people eventually believed them about ghosts (unknowingly contributing to the ‘mad scientist’ image when they loudly declared it in public without any tact). Their parents had other interests and hobbies, and they did things together all the time as a family, but Danny also knew that their parents were always happier when focused on their research and ghosts, which made setbacks like this stand out more. 

They’ll come back to it eventually, Danny assures himself. They’ll see or hear something on their trip and come back with a rush of ideas to try out and everything will go back to normal. 

Feeling a little anxious, Danny sets to cleaning to get rid of the built-up energy. Eventually he gets to the lab door, so he turns off the music and continues with his normal lab chores downstairs after slipping into his white jumpsuit, tearing off the sticker of his dad’s face again when he notices it in the mirror with an eye roll. Nice try, dad, but 37-0, my win again! Even though there’s no work being done currently, his parents had always drilled lab safety into their brains even if they weren’t the most religious examples of it themselves, so with the knowledge that he’s going to be shifting things around to dust instead of sitting at the computer like earlier, he suits up. 

There’s some light dust and old coffee rings from when the place was basically abandoned since the portal sparked and did nothing almost two weeks ago. He turns on the radio for some background noise and tackles the washroom and decontamination stations after wiping out the fume hood despite no one really using them recently. The matching half-faced respirator to his suit hangs around his neck just in case there’s an accident with the cleaning fumes despite his regular use of them. “Anything can happen, Danny: it’s always best to be prepared for it!” His hood and goggles are tucked back into their pocket behind his head, impossibly hidden like the amount of stuff his dad sticks in his pockets. If they weren’t so stuck on science and decried the mystic arts then I’d say they dabble in magic, he thinks as he remembers his father pulling out an array of bulky tools in public to reach a pen. 

Danny is about to get the floor cleaning supplies out when he eyes the lab counter full of papers, tools, and trinkets. He doesn’t usually touch that area since he doesn’t want to mess things up, but it really is more of a mess than usual. They should have a clean area when they get back. Can’t jump back into work with things lying about.

With that in mind, Danny goes and tries to organize the area, keeping alike-things together, using the bins for reference for spare parts, stowing the tools, and straightening up the papers after wiping down the counter underneath them. He spies paper sketches of the portal that’s built into the wall that he’s been working around and sighs. Maybe it’d be better if this wasn’t out when they got back though. Fresh starts and all. He piles up the papers mentioning the portal and heads over to the file cabinet to put them in the ‘portal’ drawer, but when that’s locked, he rummages around for a spare hanging folder to put them in and sets them on top and gets back to cleaning, humming along to the radio absently and working in a groove. 

By the time he’s done scrubbing the floor, the large digital clock on the wall by the jumpsuit cupboards reads just after eleven at night and he stretches. Danny looks over the lab with a hum of satisfaction of a job well-done and feels a little bummed that his parents aren’t here to see it practically sparkle. Maybe tomorrow I’ll keep up the deep cleaning, surprise everyone with a wholly clean house. 

With a smile Danny turns to dispose of the wastewater at the lab’s cleaning closet and trips over air, dropping the wash pail and sending the scrubbing water everywhere.

Instantly his mood is killed as he looks at the spreading dirty water. “Had to be a perfectionist with the kick boards, huh?” Danny grumbles. “Stupid Fenton Luck!” He sighs and goes to get the other mop to make it quick. More than once his father had mentioned putting a drain in the floor of the main section of the lab, but it never has happened so he can’t just push the water towards one from where the spill is with the squeegee part of the push broom. He grabs the ‘Fenton-Wet-Floor-Signs’, designed to be seen in low to no light, to put up when he finally gets the moping supplies away, more to keep the good practice than expecting anyone to actually need them by the time it dries. 

As he wipes off a few stray water droplets from the cabinet’s face something flickers in the corner of his eye. He looks over to the portal. He stares at it for a moment, thinking of the expectations of the machine before his ears pick up on radio static from the corner. Huh? Is it out of tune? He approaches the radio to inspect it. I thought this station was a 24 hour one. Did I bump it sometime when I was cleaning up and not realize it? He fiddles with the dial. It can’t be because it’s the basement, it has always worked before, usually only starting to fizzle in the second basement. He slides the dial slowly to catch anything, but he makes it through the 90s and 100s before double-checking that it’s flipped to ‘FM’ before trying again. The dead air static is a little unnerving the longer he keeps searching, determined not to be bested by a radio. Something’s got to be on, even if I’m going to turn it off anyway. Usually, you can even catch something halfway, right? Did I miss a weather report? But then that would show up: it’s a good radio. He starts over, turning the volume on the static up a few notches before moving the dial the barest amount at a time, focusing intently on hearing anything at all through the noise. 

He almost misses a note at last, but before he can do any adjustments it gets louder on its own. Danny can feel himself freeze at the noise through the disconnected static. The hair on the back of his neck is prickling as his mind blanks of everything but the haunting tones rising and falling erratically. He can’t tell if there’s a rhyme or reason for the pattern, but it’s unsettling him, and he can’t turn it off!

Something’s wrong, his mind finally supplies, and he drops the radio quickly, his hands suddenly spasming away from the device. It falls from his hands and tumbles off the counter, coming unplugged as it crashes to the floor with a loud clatter. The room’s silent when it settles, but Danny’s still amped, just staring at where it’s crashed, barely noting that it wasn’t broken. Something moves in the corner of his eye again and he jumps, turning quickly to find—

Nothing.

What the hell is going on? Danny presses a hand over his chest to try and stop his pounding heart and forces himself to take a deep breath. Nothing. Nothing’s going on. I’m tired. First night totally alone with no one really around for hours and it’s late; I’m freaking out over nothing! Nothing’s happening. Nothing at all. Next thing you know I’ll be hiding under my parent’s bed and wishing them home. Or just Jazz. I’m just going to b— 

The lights flicker above, but not enough to make the shadow he thinks he saw briefly. Danny freezes in panic. Oh god, is there someone in the house?! I locked all the doors though! He takes a few steps back, scanning the lab for any usable weapons for defense that might work, unlike his father’s inventions. Although… blunt force trauma is blunt force trauma, he reasons as he goes to get a hammer or something from the tool area. Where's a paint can when you need one? Having thought he saw the shadow by the door area he retreats into the inert portal to hide, wishing he could turn off the lab lights from down the stairs but knowing he wouldn’t want to be caught at the top of there if there truly was someone right outside. Fenton Luck would make me fall down the stairs if I went up now. No, best stay down here out of the line of sight. 

The unplugged radio on the floor suddenly starts spitting static again and Danny stumbles backwards a few steps further into the shadowed portal, both because he’s startled at the loud sudden noise and because that shouldn’t be happening! 

His hand flies out to steady himself on the wall and hits a button in the wall.

Of the portal. 

He has one second to comprehend a sound reminiscent of a large disposable camera powering up before there’s a piercing pain all over him, his muscles contracting all at once as electricity flows through him. 

Time’s endless as he can’t move more than a quick spasming in place. 

He can’t think.

He can’t breathe.

He can’t—

Chapter Text

Danny’s eyes open and he groans before he flinches at the pain in his throat and his body spasms like knocking down dominoes. His head starts pounding at the movement and Danny tries to stop moving to avoid the feedback loop from hell. 

Eventually the feelings subside enough for him to think again. What happened? What time is it? He feels like he’s in a fog as his brain tries to reboot itself. Slowly he tries to make sense of things. 

He’s on the floor of the lab. Nice, clean, tiled floor. I was… cleaning? But— His eyes half focus on the clock. Twelve. What time was it? Eleven? So I’ve been out less than an— A foggy memory slips through the pain and his eyes shoot to the portal. 

Green. 

Bright green.

Toxic green. 

Danger.

On instinct, Danny tries to scramble away and gets tossed right back into that hellish feedback loop of pain that his mind has trouble thinking through. Distantly he can hear something ringing, but he can’t do anything about it. When he can think again his thoughts still aren’t clearer on anything. What happened? 

The portal is on!

No shit, it’s obviously on, but it works?! 

How’d it turn on? 

Doesn’t matter right now, I need to get out of the lab. 

It takes careful and measured movements to get anywhere as his body fights his mind, one wanting to rest and the other agreeing but not wanting to be down anywhere near the portal. Danny makes it to his feet slowly, using the counter stations along the wall to make it to the stairs before haltingly climbing them as his muscles protest. When he opens the lab door, he stops despite wanting to just go to bed. He notes that the lights are all on and nothing is disturbed. 

He’s about to dismiss the weird feeling when his stomach drops at the realisation that there’s natural light leaking around the curtains. The lab clock is a 24-hour clock. It's twelve as in noon, not twelve as in midnight, meaning I’ve been unconscious for half a day. 

Part of his brain panics, knowing that he wouldn’t just stay unconscious for twelve hours after a shock like that for no reason, but the other part of his brain has effectively shut down with the new realisation and doesn’t want to process anything more at the moment. The second part wins as he stumbles over to the couch and crash lands. Nooooo, I should have gotten Tylenol or something first, his mind whines as the soreness screams for his attention and exhaustion looms, grey threatening to take over. Danny’s hand comes up to his chest as its discomfort makes itself known but he doesn’t know what he thinks he’s going to do. 

Danny lies on the couch and thinks over the night before as he tries to assess himself. Whatever happened with the radio was creepy as hell, but the memory of getting shocked is nigh-overwhelming everything else. Was it just a shock? I just froze in place. How did it stop? There’s some kind of threshold for amps, right? At least I think that’s what Mr Tevian had said… a let-go threshold? The image of the glowing portal in the lab floats into his mind again and it feels like his heart seizes for a moment before he can think again. Mom and Dad made a working portal, but how can they be sure it’s to where they think? I think they called it the Ghost Zone. 

Does it have a name on its own? 

Should it have the name if it doesn’t? 

Would my parents have the right to name it even?

This feels wrong. 

Danny takes a deep breath and tries making a plan of what to do next when his stomach sucker punches him, hunger and nausea warring for attention. Food. Food and water sounds like a good first step, then something to stop the pounding in my head. With another groan, Danny goes to roll off the couch and barely sticks the landing. Second step: warm bath. I feel like I just got hit by a truck. Warmth helps sore muscles, right? Or was it ice? Ugh, too many thoughts. He slowly makes it to the restroom first since its closest and everything is as well as it can be as he’s searching for pain meds until the image in the mirror catches his attention. 

Who the—? 

Danny’s eyes stare at the image far too long and it doesn’t change. It’s him. At least he thinks it’s him because that’s how mirrors work, but he’s never looked like that. 

His hair was bleached. But it isn’t bleached because there isn’t a way for someone’s hair to get that white without being, like, super old, right? I also don’t remember bleaching it. But there his hair was, white like fresh snow and kind of glowing softly. Or at least appearing to. And his eyes weren’t blue like his dad’s anymore, they were—

Bright. Toxic. 

The same dangerous green that’s infecting the basement. 

The same green as the portal to hell. 

Danny reaches forward and confirms that, yes, this is a working mirror and freezes when he sees his hands. Instead of the sturdy black gloves that his parents had given him they were white, like …his hair. His previous white suit is now black. Electric shock doesn’t mess with color eyesight, his mind offers up, only faintly remembering what his first aid course had told him about it. 

Danny swallows any further question of what was happening and opens the mirror to get something for his head. He has to take off his gloves to open the stupid child safety cap, which is fine until he sees them dissolving into bright green goo in the sink?! He lurches for the toilet and retches, though given the eighteen hours or so since his last meal there’s nothing there for him to throw up. 

What is wrong with me? 

Danny’s eyes finds a set of marks on one of his shaking hands as he hesitates above the toilet, waiting for the chokehold nausea has on him to simmer down. They are greenish colour similar to the colour in his eyes and go into his sleeve, supposedly farther, and they look like… plants? Like the wiggly little clownfish home turned land plant, what is it? Sam’s got one. He tries to file the thought away to look up and worry about later when his gloves reform on his hands like he never took them off. 

Hysteria bubbles up from his gut and he chokes out a laugh. “No. Enough. A ‘later’ problem,” he grumbles decisively as he grabs the bottle of pills and heads to the kitchen to raid the fridge before his stomach kills him. 

He’s snacking on cold pizza while making ramen between swallows of water when the phone rings. “Fenton Residence?”

“Danny!” Tucker greets him. “I tried calling earlier but you didn’t pick up. It’s Tucker.”

“Hey, Tucker.”

“I’m glad I caught you at home. What are you doing today?”

“Eh, not much,” Danny says, looking at his gloved hand. “I was up late cleaning last night, woke up not too long ago. I’m having lunch now.”

“Dude, you feeling okay?”

“Huh?”

“Your voice sounds weird. Is the connection fine? Did y’all’s power go out last night too?”

That throws Danny for a loop. “The power went out?”

“Yeah, I guess there was an outage in the area or something overnight because all of our clocks were off and blinking this morning. It was fixed when I got up though.”

“Hm, maybe they did? We’ve got, like, three back-up generators around here or something, but I’ve not seen any blinking clocks yet.” I haven’t really had the time to notice, but the one in the lab wasn’t blinking, right? Ha, ‘time’. 

Tucker groans. “Lucky. I had a program loading on my computer last night and now I have to restart it again tonight. Anyway, my mom’s waving at me to hurry up. I just called to let you know that we’re apparently going to the movies as a ‘family-bonding’ thing this afternoon, so we won’t be in if you had planned to drop by.”

“Oh, no problem, I’m kind of beat today so I was gonna tell you not to expect me after I was done eating lunch here,” Danny says without thinking about it much. White lies are fine if they don’t hurt anyone, right?

Danny can hear Tucker’s mom in the background calling for him to hurry up. “Cool. Maybe rest for the day; it really sounds like you’re coming down with something.”

“Sure, yeah. Have fun at the movies, man.”

“Yeah, sure. Bye!”

“Bye.” They hang up and Danny brings his ramen into the living room, something he normally isn’t allowed to do usually by Jazz, but he feels cruddy and she’ll never know. He watches some shows while he eats, feeling only a little more lively as time progresses if he doesn’t move around too much. 

He wakes up to the phone ringing sometime later and he rises stiffly to answer it sleepily, yawning a “Fenton Residence.”

“Did you just wake up?” Jazz asks from the other end, forgoing any greeting. “It’s seven, isn’t it?”

“Huh?” Danny’s eyes find the clock and it reads around a quarter after. “Wow. I didn’t mean to sleep that long.”

“When did you fall asleep?”

“Uh, like two? Maybe three?”

“Danny, you’re going to destroy your sleep pattern!” Jazz chides lightly through the phone. 

“I mean, it’s not like I chose to sleep,” Danny says with another yawn as he leans on the wall heavily, “but you know how afternoon television programming can be,” he waves off and freezes, noticing that his gloves are gone, and the plant-like marking is a fading red up his arm. While Jazz starts lecturing him about the importance of regularly scheduled sleep, Danny’s grabbing at his favorite junior NASA shirt on his chest and yanking his hair to try see if it’s black again, which it is. Danny stumbles his way to the bathroom with the corded phone stretching to the max to get a glimpse in the mirror. I’m… me again? Well, I was me, but now I’m me me again? 

“—ny? Danny? Are you still there?”

“Uh, yeah,” he says as he watches himself in the mirror, eyes back to the blue he’s always had. “Yeah, I’m still here, Jazz.” 

“Were you even listening?”

“Um… nope?” He admits. To be fair, even if I didn’t have this going on I’d probably tune out the lecture anyway since I’ve heard it so many times before. “But I did just wake up, so I feel like you were warned,” he says, lapsing back into sibling banter as he internally freaks out over the mirror thing. 

“I asked what made you tired enough to take a five-hour nap in the middle of the day. Were you up late gaming with Tucker? I thought he had family over. How late were you up?”

“No, I was cleaning up the lab, lost track of time. I dunno what time I fell asleep though.”

“You lost track of time in the lab? Who are you, our parents?” She jokes.

“Hey, I was trying to be nice. I don’t think they’ve been in there since—” Danny stops abruptly, the image of the lit and supposedly working portal flashing through his head. Oh shit. 

It’s silent on the line. “Yeah, I don’t think they have either. I’m glad because it got them out of there, but what if they actually get depressed?”

“Oh, I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that too much,” Danny mutters, thinking that the glowing portal in the basement that’ll surely catch their attention when they get back like nothing before. Likely it would even distract them from whatever it is they were thinking that would make them come back in the first place, be it us or some other goose chase. 

“You think so?”

Danny freezes. “Ye- yeah. You know how it is; they’ll see some shadow out there and be back in the lab in a jif,” he says, trying to play it cool. I shouldn’t tell her. Well, I shouldn’t yet. Not until I can answer her many questions.

“You’re right,” Jazz sighs. “Anyway, what’s with the phone?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s all… echo-y. Or wobbly? Kind of staticky too.”

Static? Danny’s mind races to the radio last night and his stomach drops at the coincidence. Is it a coincidence? His mind really wants to connect some dots, but Danny’s not feeling it as he’s taking to her. “Really? Tucker said something earlier about the sound being off, but I wasn’t hearing it.”

“Can you hear it now?”

“Uh, no.”

“Hm. Hold on” He hears muffled talking and he can almost picture his sister holding the receiver to her shoulder to confer with someone before suddenly she’s back. “Well, it can’t be my end since it’s been working fine for everyone else here. If Tucker heard it too it’s probably our phone.”

“Oh, well maybe. He said something about the power being out last night too, so maybe something got screwed up. How was your tour today?” Danny rushes forward to push it aside. “You know I didn’t do much of anything now, so how was it?”

“It was amazing!” Jazz replies cheerfully, the mystery pushed away neatly in favour of her possible schooling, “but I have a feeling they all will be in order to attract people to the schools, so I really shouldn’t expect as much as they’re seeming to offer.” He walks back closer to the holder as she talks, making up some hot cocoa as she rambles on. Sugar for shock or something, right? At this rate I’ll have to eat it by the spoon, he thinks as he rummages for some marshmallows and successfully finds a bag pushed behind the hot dish soup cans. 

He puts his focus on what she says and responding appropriately until it’s time to hang up. She ends it by scolding him again for screwing his sleep pattern over so much, saying that “summer is no excuse to get so off balance!”, which is nuts anyway, but he has a feeling he’ll still have no problem falling asleep that night regardless. 

He goes to clean up his dishes, snagging the ones from the living room before he forgets them, and drops them on the way to the sink, the bowl shattering on the floor. “Get it together, Fenton.” He cleans things up and then walks to the lab door. Danny stands there for a while just looking at it. Maybe it was a dream. White-haired bizarro-world me can’t be real. Danny sets his hand onto the doorknob. Yeah, I’ll open the door, the portal will still be broken, and everything will be fine. It would just be a hallucination, like a really lucid dream you woke up from. He turns the knob and pulls it open, immediately picking up on the pervasive green glow.

He shuts the door.

He opens the door.

He shuts it again and looks upward to the ceiling, wondering if astrology might be real and messing with him.

He opens the door again and stiffly descends into the greenly lit lab, leaning heavily on the railing. 

The radio is still on the floor where he dropped it, unplugged and silent, as it should be. He never turned the lights off, something his mother would chide him for if she were here even as they keep them on all the time since they practically live in the lab. The green of the portal isn’t as pervasive or creepy as it could be if the lights were off. It was still creepy, but he can easily picture it as worse as if it were in a horror movie. Danny walks over to the radio and puts it on the counter again, hesitantly plugging it back in and jumping when some half-found station starts blaring commercials loudly until he slaps the volume down sharply. Fiddling with the tuner he finds it acting normal again and shuts it off with a huff. 

He pulls out one of his parent’s lab stools and sits facing the portal like it’s just going to start spitting out answers to him. When nothing happens after a while, he scoffs and roots around for something to take notes on, writing out everything he’s noticed since the radio screwed him over down to try and make sense of it. He can’t draw people like he can do patterns and prints, but he writes out his description from his look in the mirror and notes his still-missing white suit from the closet. After he gets it written down, he looks it over, looking for anything he could probably answer with a web search and decides to start with the fading mark on his arm. When he had white hair, it was green, but now it’s reddish pink. It wasn’t raised like a scar and seeing as it’s lighter then maybe it was fading, so he should probably either snap a photo of it or look it up now. 

It’s not hard to find it, but he doesn’t like the information it gives. 

“‘Lichtenberg figures are fern-like patterns’ —ferns! That was the word. ‘Fern-like patterns that may appear on the skin of lightning strike victims and typically disappear in 24 hours.’” He reads aloud. Lightning strike victims? Wait, people can survive lightning strikes? Danny reads further and it turns out that it’s not as rare to survive than he thought, but then he reads through the possible effects and can feel himself getting worried. “Cardiac arrest? Seizures? A cooked brain?!” The surgeon quitting his profession to become a classical musician was a funny anecdote, but the thought of personality or talent changes to that degree scares him a little. What makes a person themselves and how easy would it be to not be you? Apparently, it’s as easy as flipping a switch, he thinks and flinches from the thought, his heart skipping a beat. Too soon, I guess. Jazz would probably find the personality stuff interesting though. 

Reading different websites to gauge accuracy gets him a little more confused as he notes down the volts and amps of lightning versus household current on his thinking page before switching the tabs back to compare. Watch, I’m going to be an expert in the topic by the time I’ve figured this all out, he thinks as he jots down some other notes about it with his written experience and looks it over again. And re-looks over different tabs from other publications while trying to wrap his mind around what might have happened. It was and wasn’t as simple as he was thinking. 

So I definitely did not get hit with 30,000 amps or 300 million volts if common household current is 15 amps or 120 volts. What was the let-go threshold for adults again? 20? 22. Then why couldn’t I le— Wait, what’s the difference between amps and milliamps again? Oh. 15 amps is… ‘A current exceeding 30 milliamps’, uh what’s it, .03 regular amps? ‘—Is likely to be fatal unless it is interrupted in a very short time.’ It sure felt like forever. I wonder what finally disrupted it enough for me to let go— oh. The power outage. Depending on how quick the automatic backup generator could get online then I guess I could have gotten disconnected between that connection? Wait, did I cause the outage? What’s this about different injury types?

Danny’s brain starts to feel overwhelmed as the science of everything starts to scream at him something he wants to smother. 

In an effort to quell his growing concerns, he takes off his shirt to follow the Lichtenberg figures, then has to remove his jeans, hoping beyond his current brain power he doesn’t find— ah. That would be an exit wound if I knew one. In left hand, out left foot. So… I wasn’t shocked or zapped like the 90% surviving lightning survivors who dealt with a relatively short time.  A ‘true’ injury, also known as becoming part of the circuit. All the possible effects I’ve written down are for a ‘lightning’ injury though. Maybe just assume it’s worse and leave it at that? Hm. If only I knew how long I was stuc— wait, we have a camera in here, right?

Danny tries and recalls how to pull up the connected camera on the computer. He’s pretty sure his parents forget about it often, but occasionally he becomes super aware of the recording device up in the corner of the ceiling. Once he finds the program, he pulls up his dad’s password notepad from the bottom drawer to gain access and view the footage. He waits tensely, watching himself cleaning up the night before, growing more agitated the closer it gets to the main point. 

He watches himself go over and mess with the radio and the picture gets blurry before he drops the radio. 

He scarcely breathes as the video shows him looking around then taking refuge in the hole in the wall. 

The lights flicker.

Either there really is a shadow figure or it’s an ill-timed smudge is irrelevant as he watches in muted horror as the radio startles the image of himself and he jumps back that much farther into the portal. 

He can barely see into the dark portal as the him in the video’s arm reaches out to the side. Danny’s chest tightens as he can tell that the current’s got a tight hold on him. The small mercy might be that the camera doesn’t pick up audio, Danny absently thinks. 

He stays connected. 

The lights flick out and the emergency lights are trying to turn back on and he’s still there. 

A spot of light brightens up around the figure in the video and the camera adjusts to show it as sickly green as it is currently in the wall.

The portal opened on me. I got it working somehow with my death holding the circuit and it opened on me. 

Danny watches as the darkened figure finally falls over so finally dead in the portal and the portal slowly ejects it fully into the main room. The time count doesn’t matter anymore on the video; there is no way anyone would survive that much for that long. Long enough to cause the generator to be triggered and the surrounding houses going without power enough to reset the clocks, he absently thinks. Danny watches the video without seeing for a while as his brain stalls, watching himself lie dead in a locked house’s basement. 

A flash on the computer screen catches his attention once again and he sees the burnt figure get enveloped in a show of light and suddenly it’s…replaced? No, wait… That’s how I looked when I woke up! Danny thinks as he squints at the white-haired figure. He backs up the video a minute and watches it again, the timestamp showing roughly forty-five minutes after the body was ejected from the portal. Other than that, nothing happens, so Danny speeds up the playback so he’s not here watching this in real time for twelve hours. He stops a few times for movement, counting what he would assume to be a few seizures and a few subconscious repositionings until it gets to when the figure finally regains enough consciousness to look around and seem to focus.

Then the white-haired Danny from earlier struggles in a stumbling panic to leave the portal behind, matching what he remembers from his first time ‘waking’ today. Danny zones out again then, eyes drifting over to his little note-taking paper where he had started to note down the times and durations of the seizures like his old first aid course had said to do for emergency personnel. 

He has questions but they don’t quite seem so important as the fact that he just watched himself get fried and revived on a computer screen in his parent’s basement, himself now being the only witness. 

My parents' work ended my life. 

Danny’s hand presses against his mouth as the though crashes over him like a tidal wave, unsure if he’s going to laugh, cry, or puke. Maybe all three. They’re going to want to know how it turned on, he thinks with sudden clarity when he calms the slightest bit. They’re going to be reminded of the camera eventually and they’ll see… it. I don’t know what I am now exactly, but that’s clearly ghostly evidence of some kind. His mind speed-runs through a montage of comments by his parents over the years about how they would handle and study ghosts if they should get ahold of one and he feels nauseous again, his chest feeling tighter. Would I be a lab rat? Danny wonders. 

With a few deep breaths to settle himself to act, Danny moves the mouse to close the camera’s viewer before going into the program and erasing everything after the failed experiment to really cover his tracks. He goes into the recycle bin and confirms deletion before rebooting the program and double checking that the footage is gone. Then he gets anxious because there’s technically not anything from yesterday to now on there and questions if that would make it somehow look extra suspicious, so he uninstalls the camera’s program, manually removes the hardware, and carefully deconstructs the camera and sorts the pieces out into the spare-parts bins, reformatting the back-up SD card only to dispose of it by breaking it two and burying it in the bin destined for the incinerator.

By the end of the meditative destruction of the small camera system, he’s breathing, his heart rate is more under control, and it’s close to midnight again. He shreds his notes page and deletes his internet history from the computer like Tucker taught him once before leaving the lab, trying not to look at the portal at the edge of his awareness. He’s physically and emotionally wrung out by the time he stumbles up to his own bed that night. 

One day dead and already I have a lifetime of questions and an impossible secret. 

Chapter Text

Danny lies with his eyes closed for a minute before he fully wakes, just taking in the fact that he is apparently alive enough to think for some reason. His aches from yesterday feel better, but far from gone entirely. A wonderful thing, sleep, he muses before giving into wakefulness by opening his eyes. 

“Ack!” He yells from the ceiling, flailing around in panic about being suspended in the air. He looks at himself and finds the bizarro-suit back, black with white instead of white with black. He is on the verge of freaking out when he remembers watching the video of his… from the lab. “Right. Dead. Ghostly-ness. Ghost-ness? Ghostiness? Whatever. Ghosts float, right?” Danny spies the clock on the side table. “10 AM, huh? Well, 10 hours of willing sleep is better than 12—no, 17 hours of forced sleep, I guess. But how do I get down? I was walking yesterday, right?” Danny inspects his room before shrugging. “Well, better learn.” 

He places his hands on the ceiling and shoves, which makes him fly into the floor with a groan, dazed for a moment before he floats off it. I’m dead but things can still hurt? Noted. Like a balloon, he reaches the ceiling again. Balloons would float faster though, he thinks. That means I have enough mass to be more affected by gravity than air? Or at least helium? Is there a natural end or would I float up through space? The thought of drifting forever is a little daunting, but he can’t say the appeal of going to space isn’t the smallest bit tempting too. I’d probably get stuck in orbit with other Earth-Space debris with my current luck. 

He pushes from the ceiling again a few more times, testing his strength and float-iness, before trying angled pushes and going around his room, bouncing around like a pinball. I keep going upward, so it’s not exactly like being in space I guess, but the feeling’s funny. Mighty inconvenient though; I can’t imagine having to rely on stationary objects to move forever, he ponders and with a push he’s falling through his bedroom door and into the hallway. Woah. I went through that. It’s solid! Danny grabs hold of the doorframe and starts slapping the door. Huh? Does it not work all the time? His next slap goes through, and he pauses again, hand in the door. Visually it doesn’t look any different, no indication that anything isn’t solid, but his mind is sending ‘creepy’ signals at his hand being ‘stuck’ in the door. Weird. Could I get stuck like this? He moves his arm around before pulling his hand back, then touches the door again to find it solid still. No, it wasn’t the non-solid thing, I went through the door. I was the non-solid. Hmm. Ok, think. Anti- or low- gravity and through solid objects are classic ghost abilities, so I should be able to do other things, right? Fly maybe? Flying should totally count! 

Danny looks down the hallway and wills himself to move, but nothing happens. “I intend to fly under my own power down the hall.” 

“Like, now.”

Okay, not a vocal thing. I feel stupid. Is this how Spider-Man felt on that building too trying to get his webs to work? If so, RIP man, I’m right there with you, he commiserates. Danny tilts his head. “Maybe I’m over complicating things?” Trying not to think too much about it, he acts like it’s walking, like the destination is the only thought, not the act itself. 

Danny successfully drifts to about half a foot from the floor and remains steady before he’s gliding down the hall at a sedate pace before stopping easily at the top of the stairs. Then he goes back and does it again. It would be nice if there was a book or pamphlet that new ghosts got about how to actually be a ghost, but I guess it would just be saying ‘it’s instinctual’ without being informative on what that really means. How would I describe walking to someone who hasn’t yet? I may have learned, but there probably wasn’t a lot of teaching: just practice. Or I could be way off the mark. It’s not like I was much of a conscious human being that young.

Danny floats down the stairs smoothly. Thinking it would be fine, he goes to make breakfast, which goes smoothly until he reaches through the cupboard for the cereal instead of opening the door. Danny prods the fridge for the milk, but then just opens it when his hand doesn’t go through. Forget a handbook for the dead in general, I might have to start writing some of this down to be able to keep track of what happens when in order to try find out why. Why wasn’t this happening yesterday? Are there triggers for different effects? Are there other things I didn’t notice with everything that happened? Oh, my stars, I’m turning into my parents but the ghost I’m researching is myself. Where is it habit? Where is it instinct? What happens when those clash? If I lose too much focus, will I be eating on the ceiling instead of at the table? Do I even need to eat at all?

Danny thinks of the paper he was taking notes on the night before but doesn’t regret shredding it. Loose paper can get misplaced. That page in particular basically leads to the discovery of his death. If he could get a journal to start documenting things, then he could probably hide it. But why am I hiding it? If I’m dead, then I’m dead. It’s not like I can just make myself alive again, right? 

Then Danny remembers that he was his normal self the night before when he found all of this out, blue eyes and everything. Or maybe I can, but still… why do I feel like I should hide it? He thinks about telling his parents, but then the memories from last night flit through his brain. They’re clear enough to put him off again, which still confuses him. Would they really think I’m not human anymore like they seem to think about ghosts in the past? I’m still human, right? I felt pain earlier and they said that was impossible for a ghost, didn’t they? I’m thinking, learning, and looking ahead, so ‘non-sentient-non-sapient’ is wrong too. What they think is wrong too and I could show them that! 

But how would you prove that to people who’ve spent years declaring you aren’t?

Why are they so insistent? 

What did they meet that made them so insistent? 

Would they even see this as you?
Or just a figment of you?

Danny sighs in irritation at the conflicting feelings inside of him. Simplicity died with his death. With a roll of his eyes, he gets up and searches for a notebook he can commandeer and sits to finish his cereal while writing out whatever questions comes to mind, starting a pros & cons chart about telling people what happened, and then a brainstorming page on what to tell people about him and the portal if he really is going to hide the true extent of everything. If it wouldn’t be suspicious then I would get a binder to have a hope of organizing the information later. Danny writes down that he had changed back to his black-haired self somehow but didn’t know how he had done it or if it was something he could control. I would have to make that the top priority if I want a hope at hiding the fact that I’m dead to others, he thinks as he jots down a summary of how he knew he had fully died versus his original thought of the lightning injury. I can’t show up seemingly overnight as a guy with this white of hair without doing anything, much less the green eyes and the suit-goo. 

He starts a new page labeled ‘Priorities’ and lists ‘form control’ as the first thing, quickly listing out different classic powers he can think of to try and test, then flips back to another page to make a note about his wondering over instinctual and habitual actions.

It’s as Danny is contemplating making a different page to document if there are any differences or similarities to the different forms when the phone goes off and the pencil he was writing with slips through his hand when he startles. I’ll have to watch startle-responses too, he thinks blankly before going for the phone. “Fenton Residence.”

“Hey Danny, it’s Tucker!”

“Hey. What’s up?”

“I was gonna ask to see if you’re up to going to the Nasty Burger for lunch. Sam’s surprisingly free after someone canceled on her mother and she is capitalizing on it since she hasn’t been able to get much time to herself this summer yet.”

“Uh…” Danny looks down at his suited form. “You know, I’m not really feeling myself today.”

“Still? I guess you do still sound weird. Did you not rest yesterday?”

“I slept a lot, if that helps.” He darts a look at his new notebook. “Jazz said I sounded weird last night too, but she thought it was the phone.”

“Huh? Why does she think that?”

“Uh, I didn’t fix her assumptions.”

“Danny—"

Danny interrupts his friend. “She doesn’t need to worry over a little sickness on her college tours, Tuck; I’m fine. I have everything handled.” 

“Yeah, but what about the static?”

“I thought that maybe it was a mix of both sickness and an off connection.”

“Hm. I guess it could be,” Tucker says skeptically. “I don’t think I remember the static before, so I guess it could be. Why does she think that the phone’s broken?”

“I blamed the outage, but—"

“That’s not how technology works, man!” Tucker whines while Danny mouths along with a smile.

“Yeah, I know man, but I couldn’t think of anything else, and it doesn’t seem like a big issue since it’s still working, even if it sounds weird. I bet that dad did some tinkering to it and something shorted out or broke or something when the power went out: thing’s old.”

“Shorted out during an outage?” Danny can hear the skepticism clearly, which is fair since he doesn’t think that would happen either and he’s not that into the tech-y bits of machines like his friend is.

“Maybe there was a surge before things kicked out? Fried something just enough?” Danny shrugs even though Tucker can’t see him. “I’m not an expert on electric current and its effect on landline telephones from the 70s, much less one that Dad might have messed with,” he scoffs. No, but I’ve had a hellova crash course on electricity and the human body. He flips to the priority page and writes down to find out what’s up with his voice that others are hearing since it’s unlikely the phone and draws and arrow to move it up the list since he’s gotten the same response both in the suit-form and out. 

“For as smart as your parents are, I don’t quite understand their reasoning sometimes.”

“Oh, me too, for sure,” Danny agrees easily, “but his mechanical knowledge really helped us during that competition last year, so there’s a give and a take.” Tucker was the one who got him into the robotics club, and they had teamed up together: him on the mechanics and Tucker on writing the code. It was a blast.

“He helped then, but how has your mom’s ghost biology thing helped if there’s no such thing as ghosts?” Tucker says. “I still don’t see how the classes for that would even go. What’d she even take, Ghost 101: Specters and You?”

Danny sighs. “A lot of theoretical studies for the paranormal stuff and a heap of normal stuff like business and biology. I think her doctorate is officially ‘integrated biology’ or something. I’d have to check again. I think their doctorates are downstairs somewhere. Dad is similar for engineering.” Danny shrugs even though his friend can’t see it. “For the most part it sounds normal on paper until you look closer at their minors, specializations, certificate studies, and clubs where things like folklore and the paranormal sciences are. I was surprised there was no magi-tech but when I asked her about it a while back when we went to go get those certifications and she said that magic was science dressed up to be mystical and a waste of time. Dad just talks about some old family legacy thing before getting distracted.”  

“Man, that’s insane. I can’t imagine being in school for that long and just studying stuff like that. No way. Give me tech and leave me alone.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Danny grins. “You get tech and computer science, Sam gets activism without politics somehow, and I’ve got the stars.”

“A good start on an adventuring team, right? Think of it like a modern D&D group! Us against the world or something. Maybe we’ll defeat some dangerous thing and get loads of money for saving people and retire at thirty.”

“I’m pretty sure heroes don’t get paid, Tuck,” Danny inserts wryly into his friend’s daydream. 

“Oh that blows, never mind then,” Tucker changes his mind easily. “Anyway, you sure about not being up for the Nasty Burger? Sam said she’s got news for us.”

Danny feels a longing for normalcy and just barely stops yelping when a white light ring starts encompassing him as he stands there before it dissipates to leave him in non-suit form. The whole thing doesn’t take more than two seconds, and it floors him enough that he only barely remembers that he’s still holding the phone with Tucker. “Uh, better not if I really am sick, you know? Sharing ain’t caring for that.”

“I get it,” his friend sighs. “Well, if you get hospitalized then you know where I’ll be.”

“‘At home!’, I know,” Danny laughs. “Tell Sam I says ‘hi’, okay?”

“Will do. Later, dude!”

“Later.” They hang up and he stands there with the notebook, suit nowhere to be seen. I need to get a hold on this as soon as possible.

Jazz comes back tomorrow.

It takes an hour for him to get back to the suited version of him. 

He’s not entirely sure how he did it. Meditation wasn’t the answer and there didn’t seem to be any kind of trigger phrase (and he did feel stupid shouting out different things in a silent house again, just in case). It happened suddenly enough that he didn’t take stock of how he was feeling during the transformation either in order to try and reverse-engineer it. 

It’s twenty minutes later that he gets the idea to set up a camera to test his voice and see if there are visual cues or ticks when it happens. Danny rummages around in the storage room that was once an office until he finds a camcorder to set up on his desk in his room, pointing to his bed. To kill three birds with one stone, he talks about what to say as a cover-up story since it’s likely he will be questioned by Jazz at least. 

“Okay… can I blame the outage for the portal like the phone? Like it rebooted some system and—bam! Working inter-dimensional portal to supposedly hell in the basement? But then how would I explain not saying anything about to anyone after it happened? With it working I doubt mom and dad will have too many questions about the how since they’ve been trying to do it since college, but Jazz is gonna freak out and she likely won’t let it drop.” Danny zones out a little bit as he tries to anticipate her questions. 

“Okay, so I have to either play it off like I was afraid to ruin her trip, which might have been true if I hadn’t actually died, or just… plead ignorance? The fifth? I mean, I can’t say if I’ll be like I was last week in the future with what the internet said about psychological trauma and fried neurons and nerves or whatever: as fast as I healed from death—oh weird words, no thank you, let’s just… push away from that thought—there’s probably gonna be some scars or effects outside of… ya know,” Danny says to the camera while gesturing to his still suited form. “Probably some that I haven’t noticed yet either ‘cause, ya know, I ain’t no doctor. And like, I know right now I’m feeling pretty okay mentally with all things considered but I’ve also been pretty isolated from other humans during this transition period so far, so next week I’m probably gonna have, like, a mental breakdown over getting ki— over dying, but until it hits and PTSD or something sets in then… well… I was gonna say ‘I’m just gonna live with it’, but that seems—" Danny pitched his voice higher in a mockery of his sister, “in poor taste!” He laughs then and the action feels good. 

He continues after a moment. “So, I should say I was there when it opened, maybe admitting that I got shocked? Ow!” Danny’s chest gets tight with that for a moment, like his heart just punched him and his hand clutches his chest. “What the hell was that?” Danny pauses for a bit, taking stock of his senses, flexing his hands a bit. There’s nothing lingering in his chest, but he does note some differences in his grip that he’ll have to look at later. “Alright,” he draws out slowly, “I don’t think that was a heart attack. There also doesn’t seem to be any other effects happening right now. What was I talking about again? Oh! Getting shocked by the port—ah! God.” He looks at his chest and sighs, coincidence connecting the dots but not explaining anything. “Is it just too soon? Or too close?” He asks himself out loud, feeling a little foolish. “I have to give some reason. It’s either admit to electrocution or say it was electric shock and there’s a 90% survival rate on the second one, so it’s the better option for people to think.” Danny’s surprised reaction is caught on the camera, and he looks up at the lens again. “Okay, so that didn’t hurt, but that felt like something in me responded and I’m getting some weird internal… vibes or something. Like it doesn’t want to agree but it… gets it? What the hell? Stars, that feels weird. I don’t know what ‘it’ is though. What if it’s a little alien thing living in my chest? Am I possessed? Do I have a parasite?!” Danny forces himself to take a deep breath. “Calm down Fenton, it’s probably not a parasitic alien. It’s likely just a new sense or something to add to the other changes. Wasn’t that a ghost movie? Or maybe it’s just a new thing. I thought it was my heart, but now that’s sounding kind of silly if I’m dead. Do ghosts have alternative hearts? I’m gonna have to check my mom’s works. If she’s even done research on it.” 

Danny reaches down to his bed and pencils down a reminder to check out what his mom has written about ghost anatomy. “Granted, I’m starting to think that they’ve ever actually met any ghost before given what they’ve said. Or at least not solid ones. Solid?” Danny’s head cocks to the side in consideration. “Semi-solid maybe. Occasional-solid? I’m going to have to study up on descriptive words, I guess. Anyway, I’ll tell them I was outside the portal when it came online, somehow got shocked, and then got outta dodge. Passed out upstairs and then, what, pretended it didn’t happen? Forgot about it?” He rolls his eyes at that. “Yeah, right. And I doubt they would talk to Tucker about it, but he knows that I didn’t know about the outage until he told me yesterday.” 

Danny floats on his back and looks at the stars stuck there. I’ve got the floaty bit mostly settled, so maybe I can go stargazing tonight. No. I’ve got to solve this. Or well, figure some of it out since you can’t really solve death. Danny sighs. “Okay, between learning of the outage and tonight the portal opened. Today? Hmm. Not bad. That way it’s not so much of a delay because I know Jazz will be back tomorrow and I didn’t want to ruin the day. So… portal opened today, I was downstairs on the computer when it came online and got shocked?” Danny focuses on the spot in his chest that had rebelled earlier to see if it would do the same and the rings of light come back and so does his other form before he drops onto the bed, gravity suddenly a factor again.

“That… what?” He looks to the camera and back at his hands. “That was it? Just focus on the little thing here and poof! New form? I guess I won’t have to worry a ton about changing when I don’t want to, but I didn’t do that before when I changed.” Danny’s stumped and just goes for another try, which works almost immediately, and he changes back again, creating quite the show for the auto-focus mechanism in the camera with the light rings as he cycles a couple more times in quick succession. “Son of a… well…  hell.” He then catches the smell of his sweat, and his nose scrunches up. “Ew, no: definitely shower time.” He reaches out to flip off the recording and heads to do so. I’ll analyze this after. I think I talked plenty enough in both forms to see if it’s me.

Okay, it’s me, Danny thinks as he rewinds the video. His hair’s still damp as he’s watching the video in the lab. The only odd thing that happened for his shower was there was no condensation on the mirror after, so he’s pretty sure he is now temperature-weird and cold or lukewarm showers feel warm or hot to him now because it hadn’t felt too different during it. He had noted it down with a positive mention of not having to rush to shower before Jazz anymore but with everything else it’s the least of his worries. 

As he’s going nowhere, he had elected to skip straight to pjs, which feels weird in the lab as he writes his new observations on the page, comparing the different forms and a little note about ghost hearts and a reminder to test reflexes later. 

In the video, his voice didn’t change between either form, both including or creating a static background in the video and a noticeable echo of sorts that sounded weird on its pitch: not natural and human-sounding at all. Now, is it just over electronic devices only or is it a constant outside of recordings? Danny looks around the room and almost wishes someone was here to test it on. Can I take the chance? I still can’t really hear anything now, but I didn’t hear it over the phone when Jazz and Tucker did. Maybe there’s a perception thing? Like I can’t hear it because it’s me? Am I just gonna have to just not talk anymore? How would I even do that? How would I explain that?

Danny pulls up the web again and starts searching for plausible reasons but doesn’t come up with much. I’d say my vocal cords were fried and leave it at that but there’s a couple reasons it wouldn’t work: the accident would be worse than I’m willing to admit to anyone currently and for electroshock it contracts muscles to the point where even in larger amounts screaming would be impossible with the lack of air movement from the diaphragm being basically frozen. 

He pulls up different reasons for muteness, but there’s not really a lot he could easily fake or explain away unless… Well, I could always just have it fall under ‘trauma’. It’s not like there won’t be enough of that to go around eventually. Maybe after a while it would even feel natural as a trauma response. Jazz is gonna be calling tonight though, so I’ll have to pretend the accident happens sometime after the call. Actually… that might work better anyway for my reason not to say anything. Or rather not-say. I’m gonna have to find some way to still talk though. Hmm… Do they still offer ASL lessons at the YMCA?

Danny’s in the middle of deleting the video on the camcorder after taking all the notes he wants from it when the phone rings upstairs. He half-scrambles to get upstairs to grab it, tripping on the stairs up twice and swearing at the sparks of pain through his side all the way. We really should have a line in the basement. At this point it’s at least a safety hazard. I should bring it up with mom. “Fenton Residence?” 

“Did you run to get the phone?” Jazz asks without greeting him. “What were you doing?”

“I was on the lab computer looking up a few things.”

“Oh? What were you finding?”

Danny pulls something from the recess of his mind and blurts the first thing that comes to mouth. “Did you know there’s going to be a lunar eclipse in October?” He found out about it before the accident, but he couldn’t exactly say he was searching for sign language classes before he ended up needing them. That would just straight up be suspicious.  

“Really?”

“Yeah, but it’s in the middle of the week and its max view is best in Minneapolis,” he recites from memory. “It’s a total lunar one, but I don’t think I could swing the time by mom, much less the thought of going there for it.”

“Which one is that one again?”

“It’s the one where the Earth is between the Sun and the Moon.”

“Ah. Cool.”

“Yeah! But I don’t think she’ll allow me to be up after one on a Wednesday night.”

“No, but speaking of being up late, how was your sleep?”

Danny puts on an exasperated sigh. “It’s fine, Jazz. I had a respectfully lazy day without excessive sleep today; just me and the ‘star science’,” he says and pathetically hoists himself up on the counter to sit. “What about you? Are you getting sleep or are you up late making pros and cons lists for each college you’ve toured?” he teases.

“Oh please, I couldn’t start that this early! I’d have to get it down to my top five colleges before starting something like that.”

“Fine, are you filling a tournament bracket for them then?”

“No, but that actually doesn’t sound like a bad idea,” she considers and Danny can almost hear her wanting to start jotting down the idea right then. “I might have to make a binder for college research.”

“And you don’t have one already with everything needed for applications ready for you to easily access like you haven’t memorised the information needed?” Danny asks.

She's instantly suspicious. “Have you been in my room?”

“No,” he denies immediately, innocent. “I just know you. Predictable, productive, proactive Jazz,” he teases. 

“Uh huh, sure,” the skepticism sounds high and he can just about picture her scowling. 

“Really!” He exclaims, “I have better things to do than snoop around in your room,” he defends before adding slyly, “unless you want me to go in and mess up your bookshelf or your desk filing system.”

“Please don’t,” she pleads. 

“No worries, psychobabble isn’t my thing,” he says easily, leaning back into the cabinet. “I’d sooner try to break into the filing cabinet in the basement than your mind books.”

“Those ‘mind books’ won’t hurt you to browse, but I would if you messed up the system, Little Brother,” she growls in threat.

“Geez, Jazz, don’t be such a memorised—I just said I wasn’t gonna go rooting in your room.”

“You had better not,” she threatens aimlessly.

“Whatever. Is that all? I was kinda in the middle of something.”

“Right, your ‘space stuff’.”

“At least I don’t need to prove space exists,” he snarks before redirecting the conversation. “I’m thinking about going stargazing later.”

“I’d rather you didn’t do that without anyone else home, Danny. What if you fell off the roof? What if you locked yourself out up there? You only have one phone and it’s inside!” She gasps. “Oh no! What if you need EMS?”

“Fire escape still works, right?” He cuts into her rising panic smoothly, ignoring that EMS wouldn’t have helped him with his accident much. “I’ll be fine.”

“Still, I’d be worried now. Besides, it would be late because it’s summer, right?”

“Well yeah, that’s generally how the sun works in the summer, Jazz,” he says as he rolls his eyes. “It may be easier to stargaze in the winter with the darkness times, but it’s cold as hell then.”

“Language,” she reprimands. 

“Who are you, Steve Rogers?” he quips.

“Danny—“

“No, I’m Danny!” he laughs at his joke. 

“I’d still rather you didn’t though,” she pushes on, “just for my peace of mind.” 

Danny rolls his eyes. Like I haven’t been on the roof alone plenty before. “Fine, I’ll just study a star map on the computer then, Spaz,” he says and remembers that he was going to use that as a cover for being in the lab anyway. Oh that worked out smoothly. “Are you still coming home tomorrow?”

“Yeah, we should be back around lunch, if not a little later for traffic. Why, you miss me?” She says, probably teasing. 

Danny bites his lip, his anxiety bouncing up a bit before noting that his legs are now invisible where he was bumping them into the cabinets, fading out past his knees. Solid, but gone visually, he notes, poking where his leg fades. “Yeah, maybe,” he admits, feeling small. Maybe I am eight years old. “It’s just quiet, ya know? Kinda freaky.”

Jazz doesn’t say anything for a moment, and he feels a little embarrassed, but figures that if he died this weekend then he can admit to that much at least. “I miss you too,” she says back, and he feels better, his legs coming back to the visible spectrum. “Next time we’ll figure something out so you’re not home alone, Danny.” 

“Hn.” Maybe look into emotions with that startle response note. Insecure equals invisible. Can’t hold things if I’m surprised. Got to overcome it somehow though. “Well. That’s enough of that,” he brushes off and chuckles when she laughs. “Anything interesting happen to you today?”

When they’re done chatting, Danny being conscious of telling her he loves her at the end but also trying not to be weird about it because he’s at least somewhat aware that they might be the last words he actually says to her outside of other methods, he goes back downstairs and spies the industrial first aid kit on the wall. 

Jazz will insist I go to the doctor, and because mom and dad aren’t home she’ll get her way about it, so I should probably pre-check my vitals for obviously inhuman stuff. Now that he’s got a basic idea of how to handle what form he’s in and a plan for what to say about the portal, this is probably the next thing. Well, that and his ghost abilities, but given his case of anxiety-induced-invisibility earlier then that might not be something he can fix as quickly as it seemed to be an emotional response. Maybe I will have to look into meditation and stuff too. Great. I just wanted to do well in high school before finding a good program to get into the astronaut program, but now I have to add another language and stuff to it! And here I thought trying to learn Russian would be the most complicated part of that, but it turns out it is learning how to be alive-presenting. 

Danny gets back to the computer to find the video erased, so he can put it aside. He then pulls up a webpage for typical human vitals and turns to his notebook to find a place to put new data before heading to the medical kit and pulling out various instruments. So long as I don’t pull up zeros or anything too crazy then I should be good. He makes a 3-column data chart for ‘average human’, ‘black hair’, and ‘suit’ to record the results.

First up are heart rates. There’s a pulse-oxygen meter in the kit, so he puts it on his finger. 95? Isn’t that a little high? Or at least higher on the scale? He thinks as he double-checks the computer. It says 60-100 bpm for 10 years old or higher. Huh. I would think it would be lower for being dead. Dead-adjacent? Anyway, what’s this 54? What’s blood oxygen? He reads the little blurb about it on the health website and shrugs before checking the meter instructions again. Oh wait, the 95 is smaller on the display. I think it’s actually the oxygen number, which would make the 54 my pulse. That sounds more in line, I guess. It says the 95% might be concerning but tolerable, but the 54-bpm heart rate is that of a ‘well-trained athlete’… so I have to become an athlete now to make it plausible? Where is my time going to go and why am I going to be busier after my death than before? He groans while he charts it before switching to his suit-form and repeating his actions. Alright, there’s the non-result I was wanting to avoid, he thinks as he jots down the machine not registering him, but it should be fine so long as it stays with this form and doctors only read the other. 

Back to his pjs, Danny tries out the blood pressure cuff, but he can’t seem to understand the instructions to get an accurate reading with the stethoscope method he tried to find a video for online, so he has to put it aside and hope for the best, not bothering to test his suited form.

Normal rate for breathing is 12 to 16 breaths-per-minute for 12- to 18-year-olds, he reads. He looks around for an analog clock, but doesn’t find one, so he pulls up one online and tries to count his breaths. 5 minutes later he’s growing frustrated at how many times he’s restarted because it didn’t feel natural like how the webpage calls for. 

Eventually he realizes that being conscious of breathing messes up the results, so he gives up on that one and writes a new row on his vitals chart for how long he can hold his breath and starts measuring for those instead. The internet says that the average is 30 to 90 seconds for people, but he’s somehow not surprised when he exceeds that by a larger margin before starting to feel effects at almost 10 minutes. Bodes well for water training I guess. When switching to the suit he tries again but gives up when he doesn’t feel anything different at 20 minutes. Cool, but… too creepy to think about. 

Danny tries to remind himself then that it should be normal since he is dead. 

That the weird part is being ‘alive’ enough to get the results himself.

The last thing he can think of is temperature. He gets out the thermometer, sanitizes it, and puts it in his mouth as he double checks the ‘normal’ readings. The average normal temperature is around 98.6 F, but given his shower earlier, this is likely to come back as ‘not that human’ even while being non-suited. The best he is hoping for is the red flags being normal enough that he doesn’t draw a ton of attention at the doctors.

The thermometer beeps, the screen blue to indicate a hypothermic state while the number reads 94.1F. He restarts the thermometer when suited up before writing down the results, but the thermometer gives off an error message for low temperature. After a couple more tries, he goes to find a glass thermometer and waits, but the temperature doesn’t get much higher than the lab-controlled temperature of 68F. I wonder if it’s that steady in the winter… I’d be a warm spot instead of a cold spot then. Probably not though.  

He can’t think of what else to test, so he moves on with erasing the computer history again and then practicing switching forms on command until he is tired enough to just head to bed. He looks around the room again to try and catch anything out of place, ignoring the green glow as he has been, before leaving the lab altogether. 

Danny finally gets all comfortable in bed, having to reposition himself more because his left side, before he wonders how he is going to tell Jazz about things if he isn’t speaking.

Then decides that it’s Morning-Danny’s problem and falls asleep. 

Chapter Text

Jazz was anxious to get back home.

Not to say she didn’t have fun on her trip! She had lots of fun and learned a lot! It was very informative, and she was excited for the other planning she has to do for it and the information she’s learned!

She just worried about Danny. 

She wasn’t sure exactly what unnerved her when talking to him. He didn’t say anything wrong or worrying when she was talking with him, and despite harping on him she knew it was common to screw up your sleep at some point or another in the summer, especially teen boys who played video and computer games.

But he had spent the first night cleaning, which raised a yellow flag at least. Danny was a surprisingly responsible teen so far in a house that would probably let him get away with whatever, so the cleaning wasn’t abnormal. For him. 

But Jazz also knew that he tended to clean things up when he was anxious, and she wasn’t there to talk to him and see for herself how he’s doing. She curses their phone for breaking on them but is also glad that it still generally works, and she wasn’t left in the dark completely. It was hard to read his voice after the phone got messed up and she was used to being able to tell his mood by it. She was relieved when he admitted to missing her last night even though she felt sad that she did. Jazz almost called Tucker to go and check on him after it. The only thing stopping her was his potential backlash and calling her overbearing and possibly making him think she can’t trust him being alone, which she totally can!

He’s fine.

Their parents weren’t even home to have something go wrong with their inventions, so there shouldn’t be anything worrying her about being away. 

If anyone can endanger him while not being present, it’s them. 

She tries pushing that thought away, uncomfortable with it. For all she knows about psychology from studying and taking those courses, she still doesn’t like thinking of her parents as any way an actual danger to them. While not fine with them being semi-neglectful, it’s easier to think about than the worst hazards of living with them. They’re their parents, yes, but she vividly remembers having to re-kill a reanimated turkey hellbent on revenge over Christmas one year while their parents were arguing.

Over Santa. 

The van the group had rented enters Amity city limits and she starts double-checking that she has everything packed up to make being dropped off easier. When they get to her house, she feels antsy as they dig her bag out of the back, just wanting to get inside and see her brother. After she waves to them when they can see her getting the door open, they drive off and she goes inside. “Danny? You home?” 

No one answers, but there was a chance of him going to the rec center instead of seeing her home, so she starts to bring her duffle upstairs only to find her brother in the living room on the couch, wrapped up in a blanket watching something on the TV. “Oh, you are home. I was thinking about ordering a pizza for lunch: we didn’t stop on the way home this morning. Sound good?” Danny nods and she ruffles his hair. “Okay, I’ll go put this upstairs and then order something for us. Figure out what you want on your half by the time I get back,” she says and goes to put her things away. 

When she’s back downstairs, she finds a sticky note on the fridge with his preferences and Danny in the bathroom, so she goes ahead and orders a pizza with his heinous pineapples on half of it. While not Hawaiian, sausage and pineapple just seem odd to her and she refuses to try it, even with the mushrooms. No, she sticks to pepperoni and bell peppers for her side and orders it in a large with a 2-liter of Dr Pepper and cheese sticks. It’s a lot of food for just the two of them, but they’ll likely have it later too. Pizza Mike’s tries to get her to order the large cookie platter as well, but that’s pushing it. “Alright, it’ll be about 40 minutes!” She calls out into the house and something thumps. “Danny?” Jazz turns and gets startled by her brother standing in the doorway. “Jesus!” Her hand settles on her chest and Danny looks down. “Didn’t hear you there. It’ll be a bit for the pizza.” He gives her a thumbs up, which isn’t odd per se, but… “Are you okay?” Danny nods, but Jazz picks up a feeling like a sixth sense. “Are you lying to me?”

Danny’s freezing is telling on its own and he sighs before shrugging and nodding again.

Jazz squints at her brother. “What’s wrong?”

Danny’s eyes shift over her shoulder, and she turns to find nothing there. When she turns back to him scribbling on a sticky note pad before handing her the top one. 

‘Do we have to do this now or can it wait until after lunch?’

“Now? What’s with the sticky note?” Jazz waits semi-impatiently as he starts writing again. 

‘Are you sure? It will upset you.’

“Knock it off and just tell me what’s wrong!” Danny sighs, but beckons her to follow before walking… to the lab? He pauses with his hand on the knob before pointing to the notes in her hand. “What?”

He points to the notes again.

“I’ve already read th—oh. Repeating yourself?”

Danny nods.

She reads the notes again and takes stock of her feelings like she tells Danny to. “I’m sure. I’d be too anxious to eat if we waited.” He rolls his eyes, and they go into the basement, Danny flicking on the lights. “Okay, we’re in the basement for some reason. What’s going…?” Her voice trails off as she notices the bright green glowing portal where the useless hole in the wall was. Wide eyed, she turns to Danny in shock. “It works? What happened?!”

Danny walks over to one of their parents’ rolling whiteboards and pulls it to where she can read it. She reads the board with a sinking feeling in her gut, her mind blanking out and having to restart a few times as she stands there. 

She reads what their parents’ machine did, how he thinks it turned on when he was down here on the computer, how it shocked him ‘to be hell’, how it happened late last night, and he didn’t want her to worry so he didn’t call her and ruin both of their nights for this. She’s about to say something about that when the bottom catches her attention. ‘Science notes and data on the other side’ is written in the bottom corner and she flips the board. Then flips it back with a scoff because it’s upside down and turns the whole thing while Danny snorts in the background. “That’s how it’s supposed to work, Danny,” she mutters as she reads over information regarding electric shock and his reactions by that point, symptoms, things to watch for from the internet. There’s a note with an asterisk about telling her about some doctor-musician.

Distantly she smells pizza and looks over to Danny eating at the counter, food set up like a little impromptu party in the lab. Food isn’t supposed to be in the lab, but she doesn’t say anything about it. There are usually enough problems in the kitchen anyway, one time is fine, especially without them here and no active experiments going on. Her eyes flit to the green portal. Well, not the usual experiments at least. She turns back and stares at him eating until he motions for her to sit and eat as well. “What are you doing? Shouldn’t we be heading to the ER?”

Danny grunts as he takes another large bite before he picks up a pen to write on the sticky note pad on the table. ‘#1, it’s an urgent care problem, not ER. #2, can we finish eating? I’m hungry 🙁’ 

“Danny, you were electrocuted! We should go now!”

‘Electro-shocked, not electrocuted. Electrocution is apparently the fatal one. 😀’ 

“Dammit Danny!”

Danny points to her and then his mouth before mouthing the word ‘language’ clearly enough for her to pick up and she scowls. Then he writes on the pad again. ‘Look, I won’t refuse to go because I know you won’t take no for an answer, but PLEASE after food.’ 

“But—!”

He reaches over and puts a slice on the plate clearly for her with a flourish before continuing to eat his own food. She eats then, watching him devour his half of the pizza with more ease than usual and glancing to the board, reading through the vitals but not really understanding what they meant. Their mom would know if those were bad vitals. But mom isn’t here, and it was part of her machine that shocked him. Her and dad’s machine. And where are they? Some backwater town in Minnesota, which might as well have been Paris for all the good it’s done their son! And probably with sketchy communication reliability all while Danny’s been electrocuted! Shocked. He seemed insistent that it was electro-shocked. Maybe he’s looked it up? 

She looks at the technicalities for the two again on the board and shakes her head. They deal with more of the physical aspects of science than I’m really interested in. Maybe he knows what he’s talking about. Won’t stop a trip to a doctor though. 

They eat in the basement for a while. Communication is nil while they eat, but with how quickly Danny is now packing away his half of the pizza she figures there wouldn’t have been much to a conversation then anyway. She tells him to leave her half of the cheese sticks alone and he does with a grin. She gets up to turn the board around to read it as she continues to eat “like a normal human person, Danny! God, why are you eating that like a sandwich??” 

Jazz feels like she has so many questions that Danny wouldn’t know since they aren’t answered by looking at his writing on the board. After eating, she grabs her keys and their medical ID cards while he puts her pizza away in the fridge. She’s coming back from snagging the info to him shrugging on a jacket. “Aren’t you going to be hot?” In answer he reaches forward and sticks his fingers on her neck, making her jump away from them as he snickers. “Come on, Frosty; let’s get you checked out.” She’s stopped by him pointing to the folder. “What?” He nods. “Huh?” His head tilts and he nods again, looking… confused? “We are definitely going to have to find out some way to communicate. I don’t know what you’re asking.” He rolls his eyes and reaches out to snatch the folder, but she holds it away from him. “Hey, watch it! These are your medical notes and insurance stuff.” He smiles then and nods a little before heading to her car without reaching further. “What?” She looks from the folder to her brother as he pulls on the door handle incessantly. “Oh! You were wondering what these were!” She cheers in triumph. He gestures for her to hurry up by pulling on the door handle some more. “Wait, do you have your sticky notes?” He takes them and a pen from his jacket pocket and waves them at her, so she locks up the house and they’re on their way to urgent care.

“You know, I thought they would be busier. Isn’t that what they show on TV? A whole lot of busyness?” Jazz remarks. They got here almost half an hour ago and took them maybe 10 minutes to figure out the intake forms, where to put what information, and how to summarize why they were there.

‘It’s urgent care - not made for emergencies.’

“Right, and how do you know this? I thought I was the almost-adult here.” 

‘Dad. Told me when we came to get stitches in his arm last year.’

“What?! When was this?”

‘Hm. I don’t think I can tell you. Swore to secrecy.’

“You have sworn secrets with dad?”

‘You don’t? He tells me not to tell mom things all the time.’

“That… sounds concerning.”

‘It’s not as bad as it could be. Or sounds.’ 

“You said he needed stitches!”

‘Because he couldn’t do it himself and I didn’t know how.’

“Does dad give himself stitches a lot? Wait, what do you mean, ‘didn’t’?”

Danny shrugs at that. ‘Define a lot? He’s tough I guess.’ 

“Great.” She huffs and crosses her arms, leaning back in the uncomfortable waiting room seat. “It’s not like I had enough to worry about.” 

‘It’s fine.’

“I’m getting concerned over your concept of ‘fine’.”

Danny taps the previous line for emphasis.

“Fenton?” A voice calls over the waiting room and they look to find a nurse scanning the area. They both get up to go in. “Daniel Fenton?” 

“It’s ‘Danny’,” Jazz says. 

“Right.” She turns to Jazz. “And you are?”

 “I’m Jazz, his sister.”

“Alright, you can wait in the waiting room for him. Danny, let’s head back and check you out.” 

Jazz narrows her eyes at the nurse. “No, I’m coming with him.”

“Sweetie, you’re not his guardian.”

“I’m not his parent, no, but I am his older sister and on his emergency contact list as of last year. As our parents aren’t here, I will be following him.”

A sticky note is pulled off the notepad and handed to the nurse and Jazz looks at Danny. She didn’t even realize that he was writing anything. “Sweetie,” the nurse says with a saccharine condescending tone. “She is not your parent or guardian, and you are a minor.” He then snatches the note and heads over to the receptionist, scribbling a new note as he approaches. He hands the notes to the receptionist as he writes them and she patiently waits, reading each one as they are handed over.

“Okay, no, there shouldn’t be a problem with it. If you consent to anyone being with you then they should be let in so long as there’s not a problem behavior-wise. Being as she is one of your emergency contacts somehow, she would be allowed if you say so for sure.” Danny nods like he already expected it from what he’s said and reaches over to point to the first notes. “I’m not sure I understand,” she says hesitantly. “Do you need an interpreter?” Danny shakes his head and scribbles a new note. “Oh, yeah, this could be taken as such, but there shouldn’t be a problem anyway. Just so you know, if you do end up learning and need it then you would be entitled to an interpreter to get your words across accurately and in real time too.” He dips his head in thanks and they proceed.

“Nice job self-advocating, little bro,” Jazz says quietly and he elbows her as they follow the nurse back, writing quickly on a new note as they turn a corner. 

‘I could have had you stay back there and just allow the doctor to talk about their conclusions with you, but that felt like too much hassle. And you’re worried enough.’ 

“If you feel like you don’t want me there–” Danny shoves her shoulder and tosses the note for her to keep. “Okay, fine, I got it.”

They get to an alcove to run his vitals with the nurse who finally introduces herself to be Cheryl. She appears flustered when she’s looking at the tools, sneaking looks at him. As she’s going to run them again Danny starts writing on the sticky note pad again. ‘Part of why we’re here is because my vitals are weird. Write what you have. They look similar to what I got this morning.’

“Um. Sure. So you know how… low these are, yes?” Danny nods. “Alright,” she says hesitantly as she starts writing the information down on the chart.

“Something’s wrong?” Jazz asks. 

‘Abnormal vitals. It was on the board earlier.’

“Danny, I don’t know what normal vitals are,” Jazz says, “but you bet I’m going to be looking into them after all of this is over.”

‘Bet. New normal is now abnormal.’

“Hush, you aren’t a doctor.” Danny shrugs then and they get led into another room to await whatever doctor is open for them. It’s another mildly boring wait as Jazz reads the posters in the room before there’s a knock.

Jazz looks at her brother who just shrugs. There’s a pause before there’s another knock. “Uh… come in?” Jazz says.

“Oh good, there is someone in here.” Some older blond guy in a white coat says as he opens the door. “Hi there, Danny. I’m Dr. Geise, filling in for Dr. Roberts while she is on maternity leave.” The guy says, smiling. “It says you’re in here for a physical?”

“He’s here for electro-shock.”

The doctor looks over to Jazz, who has risen for some reason. “Right, Miss…?”

“Jazz, his sister.”

“Well, Miss Jazz, it was listed that it had been a while since his last physical, and with this kind of disruption it would be prudent to do a full physical for an evaluation.” He looks at Danny again. “You’re welcome to refuse, of course.”

Danny looks over to his sister and waves at her to stay down, his motions getting across that it was okay with him. “He seems fine with it, so I guess it’s fine.”

“Glad to get your approval,” he says, and Jazz feels like it’s on the verge of being snide. “It looks like with your surprise vitals, Cheryl forgot to tell you that you’d have to change for it, just down to your underthings will be sufficient. If you would, there’s a drawer of gowns over there. Your sister and I will step out for a moment for you to change and you can let us know when you’re ready.” Danny gives them a thumbs up and the two head out briefly before coming back at his knock and going through a routine examination that sounds familiar to her, if just slower for the method of communication from Danny. “Okay, I have a few more questions for you, but would you mind if your sister stepped out for a moment?”

“Wait, why?”

“It’s fine, it’s routine for a physical with a parent or guardian present. It’ll only take a few moments.”

“But–” Jazz looks at Danny, who doesn’t seem agitated or anything more than bored with his pad of sticky notes on his thigh. She can almost hear the ‘I’m fine’ he’s been repeating. “Okay.” She steps out into the hall for a moment and waits, trying to think about what might be going on. She can’t remember anything like it happening before, when she’s gone to the doctor in the last few years. Jazz waits there for closer to fifteen minutes before the door opens again to readmit her. She looks at Danny who’s looking at the doctor oddly but smiles at her and gives her a thumbs up, mouthing ‘later’. 

“Surprisingly enough, Danny is in decent overall health despite his new… abnormalities.” Dr Geise cuts straight to the point. “Least concerning seems to be his vitals. Normally there would be some other kind of distress that’s obvious for his vitals to be appearing as they are. His pulse is low, but it sounds steady to the ear. His blood pressure is low, but not out of the realm of normal. It’s not a dangerous range, but it is concerning for it to be suddenly like that without training, like an athlete. If amendable, then I would suggest an EKG to look for an arrythmia, but it sounds like it’s holding, though I would recommend no strenuous activity until the matter is settled to be sure, then monitored still from that point out. If you’re still concerned or if it gets worse, then I would suggest seeing a specialist, like a cardiologist.

“As for his temperature, it’s hard to tell without more testing. He’s reading as mildly hypothermic but not showing any other typical signs of hypothermia other than a reduced internal temperature. Usually a person would be shivering and trying to get warmer, experiencing exhaustion, clumsiness, and possible confusion,” he says with a wave of his hand, “but none of that is present. If anything, your pulse and respiratory rate would be higher than what you’re showing for hypothermia. It might be another that you would need to adapt around. Without a blood test, however, you would not be able to be diagnosed with poor circulation, but you declined when I asked–”

“When did you ask?” Jazz interrupts. 

“In passing when you went out of the room. He declined any invasive test at this time. Anyway,” he continues before Jazz can say anything about it, “between the three different tests of your temperature over a number of hours, it’s safe to say that somehow your temperature is remaining steady at around 94 degrees Fahrenheit despite not being in any conditions that would be perpetrating it. It’s certainly an oddity that would have to be monitored, like with your pulse. Provided that it isn’t harming you, then it’s likely that they would be something to adapt to rather than being able to change,” the doctor says as he maintains eye contact with Danny, who gives a terse nod. The doctor looks back at his chart and scans it over again. 

“His left side appears weaker, but it’s unclear whether or not it would be a permanent change with the pain being chronic. He can still make a fist with his left hand, but the strength isn’t as present as it normally would be. We don’t have a measure of his grip strength before the accident, but you reported that you’ve not had trouble using them the same way so far, even if you are predominantly right-handed. After some rest I would suggest some hand exercises to prevent any muscle weakening as we see if your nerves will come back at full strength. For your leg I would recommend the same but also would recommend an aide for walking. It doesn’t appear like more than a simple cane would be necessary as it is more to one side; you’re rather lucky that your arm pain isn’t on the opposite side of that. I’m sure the nurse would be able to point you to some pamphlets on some of the physical therapy and the use of walking aides. You may not always need it, but it would be good to have on hand for when you do.

“And then finally, physically there’s nothing wrong with your throat or neck that would account for your inability to speak, no damage or swelling,” he says directly to him and Danny’s nodding along with him as if it wasn’t news. The doctor looks at Jazz then. “The accident may be the trigger for him not speaking, but it’s not a physical side effect from him being… shocked.”

“So there’s nothing you can do?”

“No. I am not the kind of doctor that would deal with diagnosing and treating anxiety disorders, if that is what this turns out to be.”

“An anxiety disorder?”

Danny has a pinched look on his face before holding up another note. ‘More doctors then?’

The doctor nods. “You would have to see a doctor if your mutism does not improve as it would be interfering with your daily life.”

“He’s mute now?” Jazz asks, feeling a little hysteric. “I thought you said there was nothing physically wrong with his throat!”

“And there isn’t, but there is more than one cause for mutism. Now, I can write a note if you need it that will be your ‘doctor’s orders’ for the next couple weeks or until you see your primary physician if you need. It’s basically a formal note excusing you from stuff for health reasons: nothing that would detail what is talked about today.”

‘Probably don’t need one. No job.’

“Right, 14 might be a little early for a traditional one nowadays. What about PE classes?”

“School doesn’t start for a while,” Jazz says, kind of wishing she had brought a notebook or something, but not wanting to commandeer Danny’s communication method, “but do you think that that’s something that we’ll need doctors’ notes for?”

“If his mutism and physical effects persist, yes. He may even need official accommodation through the use of an IEP or 504 plan, depending on his overall status and what’s deemed necessary. I would look into disability law for your right to accommodations for school.”

Jazz feels distinctly overwhelmed. “You think he’s disabled now?”

“Miss, it is likely too early to make official proclamations on it. In absence of further testing that will have to done through follow-up appointments, we are in a limbo on exactly how much nerve damage there was and how much will recover. Adding on that he’s not speaking for whatever reason it may be; he is not able to communicate effectively. To my knowledge, that falls under one of the kinds of disabilities that are protected by law alone even without physical ailments, but in my acting position as a substitute urgent care doctor…” Dr Geise looks visibly frustrated then and starts over. “I’m acting in a limited capacity here. If I was Danny’s primary care physician, then I would be referring you directly to specialists right now, but my position is a bit more temporary at this point in time.”

‘Lost.’

“Me too, kind of. I think he’s trying to give advice but doing badly,” Jazz says bluntly before blinking. “Or in a manner under the table.” Jazz talks directly to Dr Geise. “Could you Cliff notes this?”

‘RYG flag the findings?’ Danny writes to Jazz.

“Flags?”

“Oh yeah! Do you have a blank piece of paper?” Jazz asks. Wordlessly, Dr Geise finds and hands her a page that she folds into four and starts labelling neatly. In the next five minutes she sorts the information from the appointment neatly into things that are relative non-issues (green flags), mild concerns (yellow flags), things that should be followed up as soon as possible (red flags), and people or things to follow up with or on into the last, unlabelled section.

“That is a neat process. I wouldn’t have thought about laying it out that way,” Dr Geise says as she looks at her notes.

“Thank you. I picked it up from some psych forum a while back. Okay, so. Basically, you were saying that you can’t officially refer to specialists because your role at the moment, but in your other official capacity you would, but you want to cover your behind in case someone gets upset down the line about a sub.”

“Essentially. It’s an odd case among what I know of… electro-shock victims. I can’t say I see a lot of those, but I’ve had an interest in the past when I lived closer to where there were more occurrences.”

Jazz perks up. “You’ve had victims of this before?”

“No two cases are exactly alike,” Dr Geise cautions her, “but I have had cases with similar events in the past. Most were alright, maybe smaller changes afterwards in care. Danny appears to be a mixed bag of severity and mildness. While all of his physical symptoms seem to be apparent now, he will have to be monitored for other psychological and neurological effects.”

Danny passes Jazz a new note that just reads ‘there may be unknown properties of the portal. I’m going to ask mom when they get back for her tests since the file cabinet was locked, but that wouldn’t be something an average doctor would know about’. Jazz studies her brother for a few moments before turning back to the doctor. “Hm. Okay.”

“Now, with everything, I can’t sign off on a clean bill of health on your physical. If you need a physical on file for something like participating in a team sport, then you are out of luck today.” He signs something on another paper before giving it to Jazz. “Here’s the basic note in case you do end up needing it.”

“Thank you.” 

‘There goes trying out for the football team,’ Danny jokingly writes, and Jazz rolls her eyes. ‘Told you I’m fine.’ 

“You’re not a doctor, Danny.” 

He sticks his tongue out at her. ‘We done?’

“As far as I can see, now that it seems we’re all on the same page,” the doctor says with an exaggerated wink before getting up to leave them. “It was nice to meet you both. Here’s my business card should you decide to follow up with me specifically,” he says as he pulls a small card and hands it to Danny, who tucks it under the sticky notes. “May better news follow you.” With that the doctor is gone. 

“Well. We should get home then.” Danny then shoves her towards the door to leave so he can get dressed again. They meet with the same nurse as before to get some of the informational pamphlets that outline the basics of some of the topics the doctor touched on as well as some advice for using aides and exercises he should be doing. 

They can’t talk on the drive home, but before they split ways to decompress from the news she asks him why she was asked out of the room. Danny makes an ‘oh’ surprised face. ‘I forgot about that. Sexual health questions and the standard question of if there’s trouble at home that I couldn’t talk about in front of another.’

“What? I’ve not been asked that.” Danny tilts his head and Jazz continues easily. “Not the second part at least. I go to the doctor every year and they’ve never asked about my home life.”

‘Do you go with mom? Dad went with me last year. Had sex talk with the doc there.’

Jazz blinks. “No? I’ve not gone with mom since middle school. You got the sex talk with dad and a doctor?” Jazz hums in thought. “I feel like I should be jealous.”

Danny looks at her like she is insane. ‘It was EMBARRASSING. Informative though. Dad even learned stuff. Maybe you weren’t asked because mom wasn’t there?’

Jazz has a feeling that that wasn’t it, but rather that they mentioned that the shock happened at home but showed up without their parents. And to urgent care rather than emergency care for dealing with electricity. “Maybe. Now go change into comfortable clothes; the doctor said rest, so I’m calling a movie night. Be back in the living room by seven,” she orders. He sticks out his tongue and wanders off while she starts settling back into the house from the tense afternoon. 

Jazz pulls out the paper from the doctor’s office and eyes the phone. 

There was a chance the call would connect, and they would actually pay attention, but… how long would we have their parents’ attention when they realize that the portal is on? At that daunting thought, she looks back over the paper. She doesn’t know about health stuff like this. She’s taken basic first aid and stuff before, back when she took that babysitting class at the courthouse one summer, but she doesn’t know what these symptoms mean or what the best action would be. Physical therapy? Psychologists? Educational law and disability? Their mom might know more about the physical aspect, but she also was more focused on other species than human so her knowledge might not be spot on either. 

The amount of knowledge she doesn’t have on this feels overwhelming and she sits with the feeling quietly at the table for a while, stewing. Eventually she takes a deep breath and goes for another paper to reprint her notes and questions to look up. She’s usually better working towards a goal and her goal now is to understand what she can in order to help Danny to the best of her ability. She writes up a note to look up long-term electro-shock effects and disabilities related. She stars the part about his mutism and that it’s confirmed not a physical effect. 

I’m going to have to make another trip out to get more supplies, she notes while looking at a note about a cane again and suddenly remember Danny leaning on things more when walking. I’m going to want to get the research about disabilities and the school system done sooner rather than later, she thinks. Usually that kind of thing takes documentation and referrals, right? Spike said something about an IEP or something before too, something about the process. Maybe I can talk to one of my teachers about it to get pointed in the right direction. Jazz flips the page over to start making a list of things to get done, starting with research and going up to contacting Casper High, possibly through Mr Lancer. She considers breaking it into a timeline but gets the feeling that she’s just putting off the research.

She startles at the fridge opening and looks up to Danny getting some Dr Pepper. “How are you so calm? Shouldn’t you be freaking out?” She blurts out and claps a hand to her mouth before letting go and immediately apologising. “I’m sorry,” she apologises through her fingers. “Maybe you are freaking out over this like I am. I don’t mean to invalidate your coping strategies. This is just… a lot.” 

Danny sighs and pulls out the sticky notes from his pocket. ‘I don’t think it’s hitting me like it’s hitting you. I was thinking that I’ll be fine until next week when it hits and becomes real.’

“That… I mean, it’s not the healthiest plan,” she starts, and he huffs.

‘I know. I don’t think I’m choosing it though.’ He shrugs when she looks back up at him. 

“Right. So what? I break down and then get fine enough for your breakdown?”

‘Is that not what movie night is for?’ He writes, raising his eyebrows when she looks back up at him. ‘I have a feeling that the accident could have been 10x worse, so I’m taking the small miracle it was in stride when I can.’ 

That’s another daunting thought. In another universe she might not have had a brother to see anymore. Her eyes tear up at the sudden barrage of emotion and she almost misses his new note. 

‘Are you going to call mom and dad?’

Jazz should have known the question was coming. She sniffs and looks at the phone again while Danny watches her. “I should, shouldn’t I?” She asks, as if the hesitation alone doesn’t answer him well enough. “They should know about the portal and what happened and that we went to the doctor, but… I think I might yell at them if I talked to them tonight.” The ‘if I actually reached them’ goes unsaid as Danny looks down. Jazz wipes at her cheek where one tear slips free. “I'm not sure I wouldn’t’ve resented them a bit if you would have—if it was worse,” she amends, not wanting to say it. “Maybe I still do though, since it was their stupid portal, but part of it is on me though, right? For leaving you alone with it?” 

Danny frowns and shakes his head. She watches him fiddle with the pen before writing again. ‘You’re not at fault. I don’t blame anyone. Freak accident.’ 

“I guess,” she agrees unconvincingly. 

‘Movie night? Sleepover in the den?’

Jazz smiles. They haven’t slept together in the living room in a few years since she entered high school. She had thought of a simple movie night, but a sleepover doesn’t sound bad at all. “Sure, yeah. That sounds like an excellent plan.” He grins widely and goes to get her their pillows and blankets, making sure to grab her bear, while she loads up the coffee table with munchies and brings out the leftover pizza.

They have a fun time watching movies even without their usual back-and-forth commentary and Jazz sighs when she looks over to find Danny passed out during the first part of the third movie. She then vows that she will do what she can to help him get all of the opportunities he needs to be successful. 

With or without our parents. 

Chapter Text

Danny sits in the waiting room to be called in for his appointment. 

Jazz is waiting with him, but this time she is settling in to wait out the appointment out here with her newest binder on Danny himself and one of her psychology books. (Don’t ask him where the first two binders went and you won’t get lied to. He just… got paranoid by their existence.) 

Their parents, unsurprisingly, have basically given her free reign when it comes to scheduling and making sure he goes to his appointments. Danny kind of wonders if the number of them is not a little revenge for scaring her so much with this, but she did say something about having to get documentation or something. He already finds this song and dance annoying when he knows that nothing was going to change the outcome, but Jazz said that it was mandatory. 

Something to do with school, but Danny hasn’t really thought that far ahead yet. He’s only barely getting control of his ghostly powers but his control lapses when he starts overthinking things and it’s been weeks since the accident.

There have been many close calls in front of his family, but not as many as there could have been since their parents were drawn to the basement more than a moth to a flame. Jazz is more upset than he is with it, but considering their parents are ghost researchers and proclaimed hunters of the paranormal, he can deal with them being a little more distant when he’s struggling to appear fully human between having an existential crisis. 

It was learning control while in his black-haired form (he really needs a name for it, but that’s been low-priority) that the gravity of the week before had hit him and Jazz found him in a spiralling mess in his room. He didn’t realize it until after that, but he was hoping that apart from the emotional responses he wouldn’t have to learn how to control his powers in that form. That need to learn and practice disavowed him of that notion. Even if it was a special kind of death, he’s still dead. 

It’s no wonder he was depressed for a few days after it, but his mood did level out when Jazz got him star stickers for his cane. The focus on trying to keep the stickers on was good, but not as much as it could if I could speak and talk about it all with Jazz, he thinks, but I’ll take what I can get at this point. Not being able to physically speak with other people is one of the major drawbacks to still being alive enough to want to. 

He’s caught himself almost speaking out of habit a few times, which usually pushes him to actually find a workable solution. Jazz is in the school of thought that a little bit of therapy is going to bring back his voice from some place in his mind, that learning ASL at this point is like giving up on a chance of improvement. Danny’s resigned to it as his only option and has already been thumbing through a picture book from the library since he had talked to the pizza guy when she was reading the board in the basement that first day. He confirmed that even though he can’t hear it, others can hear it even without technology, and it freaked them out.

He feels bad for testing it out on a minimum wage worker, but he was unlikely to get answers anywhere else at the time. 

Tucker’s supportive of learning sign language and he says that he’ll start if Danny finds a class they can attend together. He’s already cheered about being able to talk about people in front of them without knowing, which is kind of funny and on point for him. Sam’s a little more on the fence on learning because she knows that there’s nothing physically wrong, but just says she’ll probably look into it. Their get-togethers after the accident were a little strained or slow for topics because of the passing-notes strategy but generally have been nice to be a part of again, though Sam’s going to be leaving this week for a two-week summer camp under her mom’s orders. Sam’s pissed: it’s “some prissy goody-two-shoes and snobby-church-people camp for rich people to shove their responsibilities as parents off to others for a while" according to her. It sucks because they’ve barely gotten to see her all summer because her mom: either out of state or whisked off to some stupid garden-party. 

He has been able to speak to ghosts though.

The first doctor he had seen, Dr Geise, apparently was a ghost who’s moved around the country following his family ties and practicing medicine. Danny’s not sure how that works with the increased documentation of people in the modern age, much less practicing doctors, but he’s not really cared enough to question it as long as he’s not suggesting leeches for increased circulation. 

He learned about the doctor’s ghostliness when he asked Jazz to step out of the room. Sure, Dr Geise did ask about abuse and sexual health for a second, but he also revealed that he was a ghost, though not quite like him apparently. When that was proven, an invisible hand through the desk worked well at cutting through Danny’s doubt quickly, Danny told him about the accident in more detail so long as the doctor kept it from his medical record. While Dr Geise did agree, he also quietly added in the seizures to Danny’s medical history so they would be listed if they ever came back, even though Dr Geise had doubted it. He hadn’t mentioned them to Jazz though, so at least he wouldn’t have that worry from her to deal with now too.

After that first trip to the urgent care center, Jazz had asked if he wanted to see the same doctor again since he was knowledgeable of people with lightning-level electric shocks before and he agreed to it since the doc was a ghost. That required them to have a mixed ‘follow-up’ and ‘new patient’ appointment a few days after they first met him, then a few more meetings, the latest being last week when they had another ‘monitoring’ appointment. Today’s doctor visit is supposed to get him officially diagnosed with some issue for the school, and tomorrow is one of the required psychiatric sessions to ‘look at’ his voice issues and psychological effects of the accident. 

Dr Geise has already mentioned that she is not a ghost, so there’s only so much he’ll be able to open up about with her if he doesn’t want people to know. Or diagnose him as certifiably insane over ghosts in general. It might be easier if she was a ghost therapist; she’d just understand and write it off with no problem, but now he had to act with someone who’s profession is reading people. That’s gonna go as well as a holiday in the Arctic.

A nurse calls him back to the present and he gets up to go through the motions of a vitals check. (‘No, you’re doing your job right.’ ‘Yes, I do know they are low and concerning.’ ‘Yes, the doctor does know too.’) Then he’s led into a room to change and wait by the door to let the doctor in when he knocks. “Hello, Danny. How are you doing today?” Danny eyes the door uneasily when they’re situated, even with Jazz absent. “Don’t worry, you can hardly hear anything through it provided you aren’t yelling, so it’ll be fine. If you could, then there would be privacy issues with other patients, and we would be on our way to accusations of inadvertently violating privacy laws.”

“I’m fine,” Danny says, relishing the feeling of talking to another person again since Jazz had stood in on his past couple appointments with Dr Geise. “I’ve been fine since the accident,” Danny whines. “I don’t see why we have to do this once again.”

“Humans like patterns. Your first appointment was not indicative of a pattern, but proof that you are stable will eventually get people off your back.” Dr Geise then starts to go through the motions of Danny’s physical check-up while they chat. 

“You sound like you have experience with that.”

“Of course. I have various notes on my own files to corroborate different oddities I have in case someone snoops, regardless of the illegalities of doing so. Though those files were made under a pseudonym over 50 years ago instead of in real time with you.”

Danny can’t imagine being a ghost that long and doesn’t want to start contemplating it now. “How is it that you can talk normal? Like, you don’t sound different like me.”

“Time, mostly. It took time for me to form and it’s in that forming phase that ghosts like me learn their abilities instinctually. You, however, are different from me in having been formed rapidly after your death and in such a unique way, so I think more of your control will be conscious practice after instinct. I have an illusion of humanity,” Dr Geise says while briefly flickering to a more ghostly look and back, “but you have a distinct and separate form. But even with differing forms, there’s not a lot different outside of appearances. I would not be able begin to guess when you would be able to control that part of your voice. How is your ghost-speak going? Anything yet?”

That was one thing brought up at the first appointment that they didn’t have time to go over because of time and quickly blurting out what had happened, but the doctor did tell him about it briefly since it is instinctual but develops at different rates no matter the ghost form. Dr Geise thinks that the use of a signed language would work well for him to cover since it could be months or years before he gets total control of his voice again. “Jells tries to help but it’s not really there,” Danny says and there’s a little chirp from where his hoodie is crumpled in the chair. A bright green ghostly blob about the size of his fist that first reminded him of half-formed Jell-O slides out of hiding and floats over to him on the exam table, bumping into his hands. Danny then starts dumping the little ball from one hand to another like one would do a slinky, the little blob plopping and reforming over and over.

Dr Geise’s eyebrows are up as he watches the blob ghost go with the flow eagerly, emitting a small buzz of happiness. “Would I be right in guessing that this is Jells?”

“Yeah, I think they’re the most frequent flier in my hoodie. There are a few others in my house, but the others don’t linger as long as this one has, hence gaining a name,” Danny shrugs.

“And the name ‘Jells’?”

“Like ‘Jell-O’?” Danny explains, a little embarrassment colouring his cheeks, “more named before I realised that other blob ghosts are similarly shaped than a fondness for the food, though the little guy happens to like the cups it comes in.” Danny shrugs at Dr Geise’s flat look. “It was better than Flubber,” Danny defends, but that name was also high up on the list Danny had gone through. He was more creative when it came to naming things than his father, but still not the best and he’ll admit to it, but Jells seemed to like it. “I can get their emotions, I think? Different sounds that are approving or hesitant and whatever too. I can’t seem to emit that back yet, but I haven’t had a lot of time to practice with Jazz being worried and hovering.”

“She does seem like she could be intrusive, but it’s been a long time since I’ve had a sibling, so I’m not sure at what point you would need a boundary drawn there, given your admission that your parents are hunters of people like us. Does anyone else know about Jells or the other blob ghosts?”

“Not that I know of?” He shrugs. “I’ve had to cover for them a few times in the house, they’re very curious things when they want to be, which can be annoying at times, but I don’t think my family has found them on their own. I’m not sure if the blob ghosts realize that my family doesn’t know about ghosts like us.”

Dr Geise hums as he thinks it over, absently fiddling with a pen, tapping it a few times on his clipboard. “It’s hard to say they would. They’re obviously sentient to some degree, but little is really known about their intelligence and if they could be sapient at that size. They may realize it but not understand why your family doesn't know. Then again, they could also be like animals that have the ability of recognition. You can’t really judge non-humans on the intelligence of humans and expect it to be an accurate record. If you do plan to teach them things, please let me know how it goes; it’d be fascinating. Have you met any other ghosts yet?”

“Like you? No. At least, I don’t think so anyway. A few animals here and there, but we haven’t interacted much; I wasn’t sure how much I was seeing and how much was visible to other people.” Sometimes Danny saw a sheen of green around an animal that reminded him of the portal, but that wasn’t always consistent. 

“You’ll get a sense for it, I’m sure.” Dr Geise stops fussing with the tools and sits back down at his computer. “Do you have a preference for what your official diagnosis should be?” 

Danny blinks, surprised that he’s getting a choice. “Uh. Nothing too confining I guess? I’d rather not have people be overly worried and watch my every move in case something goes wrong or where it makes them treat it as less serious for people who actually have it. Or more doctors’ appointments than necessary to be done with this prodding.”

“I’m able to ‘correct’ records from other departments if they are located within this office’s computer network system. I can’t hack into other networks. Well,” the doctor pauses and considers it for a second, “I suppose I could get it done, but there could be other questions raised about it and that could lead to suspicions that would get us both caught.” He looks over at Danny and continues after seeing the boy’s confusion. “Usually, you would see a cardiologist to be diagnosed with bradycardia, which would be a few other tests with a different doctor. And then you’d do the same for poor circulation or your nerve damage, though it would likely be called by something else since that’s usually a symptom of other ailments. Your sister is thorough, but she isn’t as studied and likely will accept it if it either sounds correct or if I put in a consultant doctor for diagnosis, which wouldn’t happen normally. Or if you say you’re going to one doctor and are just seeing me.”

“And you’re just able to write in all this?”

“Yes.” Dr Geise smiles slightly. “Call it a talent from being here so long.” 

“And this is on top of the anxiety diagnosis that I’ll probably get for refusing to speak?” Danny clarifies.

“Only we are aware that you are simply refusing to speak, Danny,” Dr Geise reminds him, “for the most part, others would likely see it as an inability to rather than a refusal to, but yes.” 

He’s still not that happy about the psychiatrist, but it wasn’t something he could brush past like nothing according to Jazz. “Fine, then the heart thing will work. It can be masked later if I joined a sport or something if my arm and leg gets better, right?”

The doctor tilts his head in thought since it’s been a while since he’s worked just as a cardiologist himself. “Potentially, but that would be a lot of legwork on your end to make it convincing,” he says, pointedly ignoring Danny’s snort over the unintended pun. “Without being trained, a slow resting heart rate is something to be concerned about and usually would cause other symptoms that you don’t exhibit. And if you are trying not to draw attention to yourself, I would recommend not being as trained in a sport that would merit it since that tends to come with notoriety, especially as your control of your ghostly attributes is fledgling at best. With your continued use of your cane and your irregular weakness in your left arm it would be overall unconvincing.”

“Yeah, can’t join track with an iffy leg, huh?” Danny jokes, only half thinking about what he could possibly do at Casper High. His options aren’t the best, but he wasn’t much of a jock to begin with either. He’s done some of the water therapy classes at the YMCA and they weren’t bad, but the lingering feelings that feel like they spike throughout his left side like a very distant mockery of the original electric path would be hard to ignore if he was a part of some organised sport with goals and meets, much less if he had a team relying on him. 

“If you are wanting to join a sport for camaraderie, then I would suggest a sport that would either lend itself to aiding your physical issues or could at least be accommodating towards them. It’s been a while since I’ve been hurt to such an extent, but activities that would take pressure off your joints could be beneficial, such as swimming. Obviously, I wouldn’t recommend something like rock climbing, but you could trail walk for instance if you didn’t prefer water activities.”

“If you can mess with the records,” Danny pivots the topic back to get off the subject, “then why can’t you put the mutism thing in there?”

“Because we have no psychiatrists in our facility. We do have them in our sister facility, but the computer networks are not linked so I do not have my first route of access. As such, I cannot simply write away tests and appointments for it like I will eventually be able to do for your ‘cardiology’ or other similar appointments, though if you find your grief with life too daunting then you could use those appointments for a break.”

Danny blinks. “What, lie about going to the doctor?”

“Yes,” the doctor says bluntly and Danny’s surprised, which is evident to Dr Geise, who tilts his head again. “I may be dead and a ghost, Danny, but I have learned that mental health aids physical health over the years. There may be a stigma surrounding taking mental health days in education from both peers and teachers alike, but no one will look too closely at doctors’ appointments for ongoing medical conditions. It might be a little trickier if it’s sudden, but that can be explained away as well. It would even cover taking a step out of a situation to bring yourself back to homeostasis: whether it’s emotionally or a resurgence of your ghost traits in front of others. An ‘official diagnosis’ and need to come back can cover a lot when it comes to physical oddities.”

Danny’s silent for a moment, taking in what the doctor’s saying. Honestly, he hadn’t thought about how much having something like this on file would help him indirectly with his ghostliness, but the doctor was making good points that he couldn’t ignore. “Alright, that sounds good.”

“Excellent,” Dr Geise says as he types. “Alright, I’ll write them in your record as something confirmed and get the official paperwork for the school to your sister. I would suggest you brief yourself on some of the symptoms more so you know what you’re talking about should someone ask. Did you pick up information from the initial visit over the possible effects?”

“Yeah, Jazz has been keeping them in a binder.” It’s quiet for a moment as the doctor types before Danny speaks up again. “Thank you for all this, Dr Geise. You’ve been very helpful.”

“You’re welcome, Danny. Oh, and I will have medication for you to take but only take it if you have brought it to me first. You aren’t needing medicine. I will swap out the medicine with something benign until you are legally old enough to be put in charge of it yourself or we can phase it out of your healthcare regimen.”

“Can’t I just pretend to take it?”

Dr Geise raises an eyebrow again, peering at him over his thin reading glasses. “And if your sister wants to watch you take it? If she finds discarded pills?”

Danny is about to argue against it but can’t seem to do so with how much more involved she’s gotten in the last month. “Right. I wouldn’t have thought about that.”

“I’ve been in the business a long time, kid. I used to be caught for a number of things and have learned from them. Death does not stop you from learning.”

“No kidding.”

“Now, I do think we’re on the verge of a longer appointment,” Dr Geise says after a glance to the clock and he clicks something and the printer under the desk wakes up to be used, “but for the most part we have all of the human bases covered that we can other than your psychiatric appointment. If you would wish, further appointments can be made to discuss your learning to be a ghost without suspicion.”

“Can’t I call you?”

“Technically, but we both have appearances to upkeep,” he says while shaking his head. “Meeting with a 14-year-old patient outside of the office with no other connections? Raises red flags. You getting caught talking on a phone after you won’t talk anywhere else would raise even more.”

Danny groans at the drama of it all. “God, fine, I get it. Yeah, fine, ghostly appointments disguised as human ones.”

”Good. Now, one more time,” he says, pulling out a summary sheet from the printer. “Here’s what your sister will know…”

The appointment the next day is with the psychiatrist, Dr ‘Call-me-Katie!’ McCallister. She reminds Danny of Sam’s mom to the point where he almost wanted to ask if they were cousins.

For the first ten minutes of the appointment, she was telling him about herself as a psychiatrist as he filled out a survey that reads like the urgent care intake forms when this whole thing began. It doesn’t take long for him to realise that she isn’t fully used to talking with people who don’t talk back, even distractedly. She tries to persuade him that he can talk to her, that they were in a safe space, and for the slightest moment he considers freaking her out like he did the pizza guy but just writes ‘I’m here because I can’t speak. If I could, then I wouldn’t be here’ on the legal pad his sister gave him to use for the appointments. 

“It says here that you got shocked severely in a lab. Would you elaborate on that?”

Danny feels a small twinge in his chest before he responds. ‘Traumatic event. Thought I died for a moment.’

“I see. And you haven’t spoken out loud since?”

‘No. I can’t speak.’ 

“How long ago was the accident?” She asks, looking at him and not even glancing at the form to where it’s surely written. 

Danny stares at her a moment before writing clearly in larger blocked letters, ‘Ma’am. You realize I can’t speak, right? And you just had me write this on that fancy little form there. What purpose is it that I should have to write it again when it’s right in front of you?’ 

“The form is helpful as a jumping off point where we can talk and elaborate on different things while also keeping it to review.”

‘But I can’t talk. It would be you confirming what I’ve already written by me writing it again on another page. Why not just look it over yourself and then ask other questions after?’

“You’re new to this, so you wouldn’t know how this works. This is how it’s—"

Danny rips the page from the notepad before heading to the door as she reads his last note. ‘I’ll be back when you’re not wasting time.’ He leaves to find Jazz in the waiting room, and he quickly writes for her surprised face. ‘No help.’

“‘No help’? What do you mean, ‘no help’?” She asks.

While he’s writing back, Dr McCallister is coming out of her office. “Ah, Jazz, I’m glad I caught you. Daniel here—"

“Danny,” his sister corrects automatically.

Dr McCallister continues without notice. “—is not being cooperative to the process.” She clucks her tongue, looking at him with just enough held back to not be an outright glare. “Defiant, really.”

That seems to shock Jazz as Danny holds his pen tighter as he writes, the letters slanting more in his haste of anger. Defiant? I'll show you— “Danny? Defiant? Defiant how?” Jazz asks, bewilderedly looking between the two. 

“He’s distracted while listening and refusing to follow directions. And then he—”

Danny whips out a blank sticky note and sticks it on Dr McCallister’s forehead before giving the notepad he’s been scribbling out what happened to his sister while the doctor shrieks over it, which does kind of make it work like a ‘pause’ he was going for, even without drawing the lines. Luckily Jazz has gotten better at reading his messy shorthand over the last month. ‘Of course I was distracted when listening to you talk about yourself. I was filling out that form!’ He writes on a new note as his sister puzzles out the legal pad, sticking it at the top for Jazz to read aloud in front of the affronted doctor in the middle of the waiting room as people watch on.

”It looks like you’re refusing to adapt to your patient and the methods that would be a better experience for them,” Jazz says tersely, frowning at Dr McCallister. “And like you aren’t listening when they say something needs to change or when they give suggestions on what would work better for them.”

“The patient doesn’t know what—"

“The patient is the most important part of this!” Jazz interrupts, steamrolling right ahead. “If the patient does not feel listened to, how would you expect them to feel comfortable enough to stay? To get help? Let me see this form,” Jazz demands.

“I don’t really see how—” 

“If it’s important enough for my brother to have an issue with it then I need to see it.”

It looks like Dr McCallister swallowed a lemon and Danny’s mood picks up a little. “It’s in the office.”

Jazz gestures with her hand for the doctor to lead the way. “Good.” They follow the doctor back to the room and she grabs the papers for Jazz to see and they sit as she goes over them. After a quick scan she looks at the loose legal page and asks Danny what he was responding to, which he writes or points to on the page. After thanking him she sets the papers on her lap and looks at the doctor. “How many times would you say you’ve had a mute patient, Dr McCallister?” 

The doctor’s gaze narrows. “I can’t give out that information.”

“I’m not asking who or specific details that would reveal individuals,” Jazz says with patience that Danny’s not really feeling. “I’m asking for your experience through your job. How many cases?”

“I’ve had experiences with people it was difficult to get talking—"

“Mute patients, Dr McCallister,” she repeats herself, a little more clipped from the doctor’s hedging. “No voice before, during, and after your meetings.” 

The doctor scoffs. “I get people to speak—"

“So… no true experience then?” Jazz clarifies. 

“Your brother is refusing to talk to me—"

Jazz interrupts the doctor once again and Danny’s in awe at the change in his sister. While she has been muddling through the best she can through doctors’ appointments with Dr Geise and meetings with the school for the IEP process, she’s clearly in her element with this office. Psychology has been a special interest for her for the last three years at least and she’s been swimming through different aspects of it the whole time. “Danny is not talking with anyone, which is why we’re here, as he said. That doesn’t mean he isn’t communicating with people,” she says while lifting the papers for emphasis. “He is not shying away from communicating with people, even when it’s difficult. Danny’s even been looking into learning sign language to speed up the communication delay so he wouldn’t have to try and write every word to get his thoughts known. He is willing to communicate. He was talking normally like any other teen even hours before the accident when I was on the phone with him a month ago. He has since gotten a clean bill of health for anything physical that reportedly causes other types of mutism by Dr Geise, from brain damage to vocal cord damage. Danny is doing his best with what he can do after a very traumatic event, and his best right now is nonverbal communication. Can you look past your biased protocol and work with him to help him? Or do we need to find a new psychiatrist for his official school evaluation and subsequent appointments? I would like to get things settled before the year starts so he doesn’t fall too far behind because of communication demerits in classes that wouldn’t be covered otherwise.” 

Dr McCallister looks irritated that Jazz actually seems to know her stuff and Danny is smiling at his sister as she looks back unflinchingly. “Is there a reason you aren’t doing this eval if you’re so knowledgeable?” She asks, a little too snidely for Danny’s taste.

“Aside from it being a conflict of interest as I’ve stated that he is my brother, I’m only a senior.”

“Oh, so you haven’t gotten your psych degree yet,” the doctor says, still sounding a little smug.

“I haven’t gotten my diploma yet.”

“Diploma?” 

“Yes ma’am, I am a senior. In high school.”

“You’re a high schooler?” Dr McCallister blinks in shock, eyebrows raised high. “You’re studying psych I suppose, probably in an introductory class?”

“I will be entering a psych program directly after high school with the college credit I will have completed by graduation this year,” Jazz clarifies. “I haven’t narrowed down which college yet though.”

Dr McCallister looks floored as she takes that in and Danny hands her a sticky note he was writing. ‘Kindergarten exception. Then she tested out of some things and moved credits around. Highest PSAT score the school has seen in years last year. Parents are both doctors, fast tracked in their fields. Her special interest is psychology and has been for years.’

The doctor takes in the information, realizing that Jazz is very dedicated to her schooling to be so accomplished at only 17. “Are your parents psychologists?”

“No way,” Jazz snorts, the idea laughable to them both. “Dad’s an engineer and inventor and Mom’s focus is on biology,” she says, purposefully leaving out the strange specifications for both. “They don’t really deal with psychology.” Or believe in it, Danny thinks. 

“Interesting. And you, Daniel?”

“It’s Danny,” Jazz interjects. “He prefers ‘Danny’.”

Dr McCallister nods and corrects herself. “Apologies. Danny?”

‘I’m gonna be a freshman. No special notes or achievements.’

“That’s not true,” Jazz admonishes him with a little shove to the shoulder and focuses again on the doctor to brag. “Danny was exceptional in the robotics club in middle school and is very interested in astronomy. Last I checked, he wanted to be an astronaut.”

We’ll see if that happens now. Danny doesn’t write anything against it and just sort of shrugs. I’m going to have to see how this affects that, take another look at their health requirements for astronauts. I probably wouldn’t be making it to space, but maybe I could be a researcher or design stuff? Danny shoves the thoughts aside and writes something else instead. ‘It took her a year to straighten astrology and astronomy in her big head. Thought I was gonna be a new-age hippie or something.’ 

“Hey! You can’t blame me for that; the words are very similar!” Danny rolls his eyes, his amusement clear to the other two. 

Dr McCallister does end up agreeing to start over. Jazz stays put to quietly monitor things when Danny insists on it, telling Dr McCallister that Jazz wasn’t going to learn anything new from the session anyway. The doctor is more careful to ask questions that he’s not already answered, and with that his attitude towards her levels out. She asks for details, and he gives all the details not already present for her to think of and look over.

He matches a number of criteria for selective mutism aside from his general willingness to speak and socialize. “At this point I do not believe you have any diagnosable disorder for anxiety which would normally be at the root of a selective mutism disorder that isn’t physical. It does sound linked firmly to the trauma you’ve had though. Hm… Do you find yourself able to talk to yourself when alone?”

Danny blinks at the question, not expecting it. If it’s no, would that make it more of an anxiety thing? If yes, then why wouldn’t I be able to talk normally? If it’s that I haven’t tried they’re going to ask me to and that’s gonna be awkward, especially if they try to listen in somehow. What do I say?? Danny hesitantly puts his hand to write again. ‘Hasn’t occurred to me. I haven’t really self-talked out loud since the accident.’

“Would you say you did that often?”

‘Not too often, but often enough.’

“What would you usually talk to yourself about?”

‘Just thinking aloud, reminders, motivations during really boring study sessions.’ 

“All normal things. Have you stopped entirely, or do you think you just don’t notice when it happens?”

‘It’s stopped entirely,’ Danny writes, sure of it because he’s caught himself doing it and purposely stops so he’s not accidentally overheard when he’s not focused on his surroundings. It wouldn’t do to have a habit screw me over after all of this commitment.

“Do you find yourself less motivated or forgetting more things due to the stopping of it?”

Danny genuinely considers the question. ‘No?’ 

“Okay.” Dr McCallister looks at the papers and through his responses. Most of Danny’s answers have enough context to remember the questions when she reads them again. “Other than the problems ineffective communication can bring, I’m not really finding a source of the issue at hand. I can probably go ahead and write up traumatic mutism in your file for your school.” Dr Jones looks up at Danny again. “Are you sure you can’t think of any other event or reason that this would be related to? Any background anxieties that might be compounding to this?”

Danny smiles. ‘I’m sure. Other than a severe dislike of Christmas because of a dog, there’s not a lot that sets me apart.’

“God, I can’t believe you remember that dog peeing on you,” Jazz says with her nose wrinkled, having looked over when he started writing for that one. Danny pinches his nose and waves a hand in front of his face like he’s clearing the air of a bad smell. “Ah, the smell was pretty bad. You’re lucky it wasn’t a cat or skunk or something else.” Jazz turns to the doctor again. “We’re good to go then?”

“Yes, you are. I’d like to apologize again for my behavior at the start of our meeting, Danny. I also think you would do well learning sign language if you do not regain your speech; you’re a very expressive individual and very bright.”

‘Thanks 🙂’

They leave the office after setting up a follow-up session. Danny’s annoyed that he has to come back at all, but Jazz had said that he would need to attend a few times at least to make her happier about ‘coping with the accident’ because she was concerned with some of the possible psychological effects she read online.

Jazz offers to go get ice cream for a victory on her list of things to do, saying that she had expected it to take two to three visits to get the acceptance for the school and enough of a rapport to continue but cheers for his willingness to speak up for himself again. “I’m sorry I’ve been negative about you choosing to learn ASL,” Jazz says out of the blue when they’re both chilling. They’re sitting on a bench with a couple of sundaes in the sun and Danny is soaking up the warmth like a lizard. “I should have listened to what you wanted when you were talking about it and helped with getting you access. If you still want to learn, I’ll learn with you.”

‘What changed your mind?’

“Talking to Dr McCallister. I felt like a hypocrite when I was calling her out. You have been communicating with all of us this whole time, but I wasn’t really registering it as such until I was defending it.” She sighs. “I want what’s best for you. I don’t want any opportunities closed because of the accident. But I wasn’t all that accepting of how you wanted to reach those opportunities and it wasn’t helpful.”

‘It was going to be like this anyway.’

Jazz thinks Danny might be right since he was saying it from the start a month ago. One could learn a lot in a month. “Maybe, but now we’ve lost time to get the language down before school!”

Danny rolls his eyes; figures she would think of school first. ‘I’ll try my best to learn quickly then!’

Jazz doesn’t seem too sure about that. “We’ll have to pick up some books on it, maybe videos if they have them. I’ll check the library tomorrow and see what they have as an option.” 

‘We got this. It’ll be fine. I got a picture book. YMCA had a weekly class sometime a while back and they’ll be starting another round soon. Tucker will learn too. Sam maybe.’

“She probably will when it’s not such a new thing going on. Once she realizes it’s here to stay.” 

‘Experience?’ He writes, flashing a cheeky grin when she glances back up from the word. 

“Yeah, I’m talking from experience,” she says, rolling her eyes. It’s quiet for a while as they eat until Jazz breaks it again. “Do you think mom and dad will learn?”

Danny shrugs and wobbles a hand back and forth. He’s thought about it a few times, but thinks that they probably wouldn’t. If the portal hadn’t opened then they would probably be more likely to learn, even if it were more of a novel thing for them than actually necessary for him, but with how the portal has sucked their attention so far… Danny chooses the middle of the road option for Jazz. ‘Maybe but also may want to automate because I’m not deaf. Cyber man here we go!’ 

Jazz gets the joke immediately, seeing their parents creating something that vocalizes signs but ends up damaging Danny’s hands by overheating or something else. “God, I can see it and it going wrong,” she says in horror. “It would be better if they just learned to read it. There wouldn’t really be a need for them to learn to do the actions, I guess, even though it’d probably help learning it all.”

Danny nods, thinking of metal gloves and wires and all of it ready to go bad in an instant. ‘My luck there would be a secondary purpose to the robot arms that takes over my nervous system.’

“Now you’ve jinxed it!” Jazz laughs before sighing. “So. Anything else planned today?”

‘Video games at T’s maybe? Sam leaves Fri.’

“Where’s she been anyway? I’ve hardly seen her since school ended.”

Danny shrugs. ‘Her mom isn’t a fan of mom and dad, kept Sam away. Now she’s going to camp “to be indoctrinated” <- S.’ 

They both know the feeling of people skirting around them because of their parents in the past, but not many are still as dedicated about keeping away as the Mansons. “That’s not really healthy for Sam, isolating her at a crucial transition time in life.”

‘Wants a Manson Clone™️, not Sam. T & I can’t help.’ Danny sighs and Jazz puts an arm around him, giving him a little shake. 

“It’ll be fine. Sam may be at a crucial point, but I’ve not ever seen her fully back down when she is against something,” she tries to reassure him. “How about while you are out, I go to the library to see if they have any more sign language books I can check out and we can start reviewing tomorrow together.”

‘Learning ASL from a book is odd,’ he warns her. 

“Well, it has to be seen, so the library will have resources, like tips and dictionaries, possibly videos to watch that I can check out.”

Danny sticks his tongue out at her. ‘Nerd.’

“Well this nerd is so going to kick your butt at learning this,” she proclaims, jabbing a thumb at herself proudly. 

‘Probably.’ Danny smiles. ‘It’ll be good to have your help.’ 

Chapter Text

It was still hectic a month into starting at Casper High for Danny. 

There were people he had met but didn’t really know trying to catch him out for speaking, and many people he kind of knew trying to prompt him into spilling all the details of the accident like it was their business to know. 

Walking around the school is still a hassle, especially since it’s a new building for him. It took him almost two weeks to memorise where all of his classes were located around the building and how to get to them without any references. The ever-changing flow of people between classes was still making it hard for him to get from place to place within the limits of the bell schedule and Danny was seriously considering taking up his accommodation to leave a couple minutes early from class. He knows that it should be easy to ask for the time to alleviate the trafficking issue, especially since it seems like most teachers use the last minute to let students pack up anyway, but he also doesn’t want to get more stares than he already does or rock the boat with his teachers. 

Or rock it further. In addition to the tardies that he has to keep getting waived in the office, a few of the same teachers are outwardly annoyed with him not speaking, which doesn’t really seem ‘professional’ of them in his opinion. 

Some teachers avoided calling on him, which didn’t bother him too much when he didn’t know the answer, but he did eventually pick up the pattern when he raised his hand to answer and was obviously ignored multiple times. Some teachers did give Danny time to respond on a whiteboard provided by the school, which was nice, but he also couldn’t wait until he felt like he knew enough ASL to talk through an interpreter though because those quiet pauses when he is writing his response feels awkward with everyone watching. The teachers who use that moment to nitpick his spelling and grammar in front of the class are extra annoying. 

Jazz is more upset with the school about him not having an interpreter yet than he is, but the school had said there was a shortage and that they were trying, so Danny doesn’t think it was that big of a deal since it’s not like he couldn’t hear. Jazz said it was both ‘the principle of the thing’ and something about “exposure to a language increases the rate of language acquisition” or something. Tucker was working on a low tech text-to-speech gadget for fun, but he struggled to make something simple, and the school was hesitant about Danny being on any technology during class based on the opinions of his teachers. 

His dad tried making a gadget too, but he got sidetracked into working on something to translate ‘ghost speech’ instead. 

One plus was that Phys Ed was easier than expected. Danny didn’t think he needed a ton of accommodations for it out of letting him be slower, adapting the instructions and expectations, and opting out when it came to days he leaned on his cane more, but apparently Coach Tetslaff saw ‘bradycardia’ in his file and pretty much wiped his hands of doing more than that. Some things he was explicitly told off from participating in altogether and was just sent to do anything from taking a walk to lifting weights those days, which was fine by him. Most of the time he opted for weights since he tended to have some pain from walking around the school by that point of the day and the slow stretching movements helped a little. Tucker was jealous though, even if Sam told him that heart conditions were nothing to be jealous of. 

Danny sits down at what seems like will be their ‘usual’ table in the cafeteria and waits for his friends to get through the line, catching sight of Tucker’s red hat in the line easily enough. Sam wasn’t too far from him, but he had overlooked her again. 

It was still weird looking for Sam and finding black hair. 

Danny and Tucker only saw her again a couple days before coming to school and they hardly recognized her at the Nasty Burger with her new look. Gone was the plain and girly-leaning clothes (plain by her choice, the ‘girly’ aspects being her mother’s forceful additions) and in its wake was dark and edgy. Sam had apparently got a hold of dye and scissors for her hair and went on a shopping spree while at the away-camp out on the east coast. Anything not falling in line with her chosen aesthetic after the frenzy of teens in her group at camp was thrown out when she returned and her mother just about died herself. 

Danny’s just glad it couldn’t be blamed on him and Tucker. 

“Look, I’m not saying everyone will eat it continuously, but I am saying that it should be an option at least,” Danny can hear Sam tell Tucker as they approach. 

“Sam, you just said you were trying to talk the school board into changing the entire menu to your mega-vegan diet plan.”

“It’s ‘ultra-recyclo-vegetarian’, Tucker, not vegan,” she says with a sneer on the word. “While I agree with not eating anything with a face, their stance on honey and bees is not sound if they are looking at actually helping anything. It’s been proven that bees will ditch the hive if they don’t like their conditions, which negates the argument that it’s inhumane and goes against nature.”

“Admit it, Sam, you just like pizza too much to give up cheese.”

Sam gives him a flat look. “We live in the Midwest and Wisconsin is right there.” she points out. “I do know how dairy farms are generally run and it’s decent, despite the capitalist part of it. Capitalist agendas always suck, but you win some you lose some. It's raising animals just to kill them to feed a system that generates a lot of food waste and other inhumane treatment of animals that I cannot stand behind.”

“And to do that you’re going to feed people grass on a bun?”

Sam scoffs. “Be real, Tucker, no one would eat that—”

“I know!”

“—and grass isn’t the best for a human stomach anyway,” she waves off. “Lettuce wraps, salads, and soy meat, though, are a perfect way to introduce more vegetables into a person’s diet!” She cheers. “And lentil soup! Vegetable stir-fry and rice! Falafel!”

“No one’s going to go for it!”

“People should be open to eating new things!”

“And the best way to give them the choice is to take away their other choices?”

“Exactly!” She says, “then they’ll see that it’s better than what their preconceived notions and meat-industry propaganda tell them!”

Danny reaches and taps the table between them a few times to get their attention. “What’s going on?” Danny signs with a couple motions.

“What’s happened?” Tucker exclaims dramatically, throwing his head back fast enough to almost lose his hat. “I’ll tell you what’s happened!” Tucker starts with a finger jab Sam’s way. “The goth-vegan-vulture over here decided to get the school to change the menu to have a veggie menu all week next week! To think this will be the last meat meal here for a while,” he says sadly at the greasy Salisbury steak that honestly reminds Danny more of soft plastic than beef, which is why he got the chicken fingers yet again this week.

“When did you have the time for this?” Danny asks.

Danny sees Sam mouth the corresponding words they were learning as he makes the signs slowly, her eyes focused on interpreting mentally it before scoffing once again. “I might have been gone most of the summer, but that did not mean I couldn’t send e-mails to the school board for their meetings. The Manson name apparently has some weight there after all. It even helped when I was able to use mom’s e-mail.”

“You hacked your mom’s e-mail?” Tucker exclaims as he leans forward, impressed in the idea despite hating what the skill was used for.

“No,” Sam admits, “she left it open. She’s lucky it was me, honestly; I could have been anyone. I also unsubscribed her from some of her beauty mags so she’ll have less to hound me over. I might have also added her on a few other mailing lists as well.” 

‘Anything Jazz would approve of? Family Psych Today! maybe?’ Danny writes in his ‘conversation journal’. It’s the size of a small book, red with duct tape on the cover to cover his sister’s titling, to hold his half of the conversation when the signs are unlearned or talking with people who can’t read signs. As a group they’ve made progress with learning, but they’re all shaky with both signing and reading signs. Their priorities are a little skewed for each of them, with Danny practicing more with gaining vocab and signing itself while the others are making reading it a priority and signing themselves secondary. The notebook was Jazz’s brilliant idea and was supposed to lead to less sticky notes, but in retaliation Danny spent a little extra money on a jumbo variety pack and papered their bathroom in different note-shapes and colours to annoy her. He still uses the book though, even if the notes were addictive and flat out convenient to keep on him and in every room of the house. He keeps a couple different shapes from his papering of the bathroom to add to his messages too.

Sam lights up at his suggestion, her mischievous gleam back in place. “No, but that’s a good one! I’ll have to keep it in mind when I go home.” 

That weekend goes by the same as the last few. Jazz, Danny, and his friends meet up in the afternoon on Saturday after Jazz gets done tutoring at the library to go over signs before she goes home and Danny, Sam, and Tucker find something else to do. Usually they work on their shared homework for a little bit before going to the park to hang out. Jazz has mentioned that they could work on their school work when she’s tutoring, but none of them want to get up when she does despite it likely working out as more time for games later. 

On Sunday Danny pops into the lab to socialise with his parents, catching up on their ideas and plans with the portal. Outside of their time notations in their journals he doubts they would know what time it was and that it was Sunday at all if he didn’t upkeep the little ritual. He and Jazz usually can still pull them up for dinner, but they end up back in the lab after dinner more often than not now that the portal opened, despite Jazz trying to get them to stop afterwards after being at it all day.

While Danny is in the lab, he tries to understand what they do about ghosts, but it’s hard to connect with the information when their first ideas are that ghosts can’t think or feel anything at all, that ghosts are ‘simply echoes’ according to his mother, and therefore his father. He knows, obviously, that it’s not true because he’s standing here making an effort to understand their work and their beliefs about his…kind. And even if I am a freak of a ghost with the different forms thing, Dr Geise is a whole-ass doctor! Danny thinks, I don’t think that that would be possible if ghosts were simple echoes. 

It makes it comedic for him too when his parents are adamant that they would recognise a ghost anywhere and Danny spies Jells in the background sniffing around without the others noticing them. Well, funny after he covers for the little blob ghost.

His dad’s gadgets are still just as goofy and gimmicky as before the portal opened, still barely working despite Jack’s enthusiasm. Danny tries to note which ones look like they actually could work, like the ghost-finder that his parents assume is broken when it points to him. Further scrutiny about why the machines aren’t working as they think they should despite their theories make him antsy, but Jack and Maddie get sidetracked often when Jazz starts yelling and nagging them about bringing work upstairs and how they should be more ‘sensitive’ to Danny because of the portal accident and what it’s done for him. I know she is trying her best for things to get back to normal and it would be nice if things were like they were before, but I don’t want them looking too closely into what really happened. He’s already spent over two months trying to hide how bad the accident actually was; it’d be a shame if things came around and disrupted the rhythm they’ve fallen into. 

Danny’s had more than a few existential crises about what ghosts are and where they come from in the last couple months when their parents have brought up how ‘expert’ they are. A lot of their twenty-plus years of experience doesn’t match his own experiences or notes he’s written about Dr Geise and the other ghosts he’s seen around. If it weren’t for Dr Geise, then he’s sure he would be more on edge about it given that the only other ghosts he’s noticed has been animals and the blobs, both of which he wouldn’t be able to know for sure if the instincts they displayed were of their former lives (in which case I’m really confused about the blobs since they aren’t former things according to Dr Geise??) or if they were standard for a ghost. With Dr Geise at least he knows that there are still some distinct instincts as a ghost that would show up in all of them, but that his self is likely more geared to human instincts in general, both as a former human and the fact that he has a human form.

The ‘human form’ thing is another thing that he keeps pushing to the back of his head to deal with later, the ‘later’ always getting pushed back until the quiet of the night with just Jells for company where it won’t leave his thoughts. He goes over the logistics of having separate forms in his head as he plays with Jells when he can’t sleep, but he doesn’t gain much insight as he wonders about who he is now and what ghosts actually are. If what he is seeing are actually ghosts, then why would he be different with separate forms rather than a camouflage ability like Dr Geise? And what is the ‘ghost portal’ actually for? 

While he has been in the basement since his parents arrived home from their trip, he’s avoided getting too close to the portal despite it being his parent’s sole focus. If they’re wrong about ghosts, does that mean they’re wrong about where the portal goes? If that is the afterlife in the basement, then is it a good or a bad one like how people describe heaven and hell? Or is it neutral and the stories are more about humans projecting their fears, or lack thereof, over death than supposed punishment in the afterlife? The smallest part of Danny wishes that his parents had taken at least some interest into spirituality growing up when he starts questioning what morality means on top of questionable states of mortality, but the majority of him thinks that he should be glad about not having an extra level of crisis on what’s already there. 

Danny’s feeling the late-night pondering again on Monday when he’s dragging himself around the school for classes. 

He doesn’t sleep in his classes, but today he is partially glad that a couple of the teachers have been ignoring him so far since he feels like he’s in a sleepy fog until lunch when Sam and Tucker’s arguing about the menu wakes him up more. Truly, Tucker doesn’t seem far off in his estimations of the menu being grass-on-a-bun when there’s what looks to be a pitifully soggy iceberg lettuce salad sandwich offered in the line. There’s not even cheese on it to soften the blow. Danny thinks as he listens to Sam stalwartly defending the offered food as he pulls it apart. Aunt Alicia could do better than this for healthier food though, and she’s more for Tucker’s fare. 

A sudden feeling of ice running down his neck makes Danny gasp and look around. As he scans the area for anything out of the ordinary, he spies Jells making a quick loop-de-loop before zipping through the kitchen window, the faint feeling of surprise and alarm making its way to him across the lunchroom. What are you doing there, little buddy? So far Jells has been good about keeping away when he’s around people, so the little blob being out so brazenly is intriguing. Danny gets up, distractedly excusing himself as his two friends start snipping more and starts walking to follow where Jells left, feeling confusion and concern wafting through the air. 

With his attention drawn elsewhere, Danny doesn’t realise someone is calling out to him until there’s a rough shove at his back and he almost falls to his knees. “What, are you deaf too?” Dash Baxter sneers. “I said ‘your girlfriend better watch her back for messing with my lunch’!”

My what? “I don’t have,” Danny signs, shaking his head. I’ve not practiced that one. “No person?” Good enough.

“Oh, cut the shit, Fenton, I know you can hear me: knock that waving off.”

“Yeah, I hear fine. Speaking is…” Danny fumbles to remember the right sign for ‘problem’, even if he knows Dash doesn’t know ASL. Or is that ‘trouble’? Danny changes to what he does know in exasperation. “Bad…?” 

“Ain’t no one knows what you’re saying!”

Stars, how do I gesture this for a meathead to get? He glances over to his bickering friends before just trying to communicate on his own anyway. Danny tilts his head back a bit and taps the front of his neck with his fingers before making a slitting motion while shaking his head, then points to his ear and shoots Dash a thumbs up with his other hand. There, that should be clear enough. 

Dash looks put off for only a second before grabbing him by the shirt and pulling on him roughly. “Whatever, no one wants to hear your pathetic voice anyway, Fentonio. It’s your fault your girlfriend ruined my lunch, so—” Dash reaches over for a tray that Kwan is holding, “so you’re going to eat this garbage instead!” He holds up the tray for Danny to see and Danny feels bewildered enough that he almost breaks his silence.

The fuck? Is that actual fucking mud?? I’d be pissed too, what the hell Sam? As Dash brings it closer, Danny pushes at the jock to get away, thinking that he’s going to get a face full of mud, and somehow makes the tray tip all over Dash’s letterman jacket in the process. 

There’s one second for Dash to process before Danny can see his face turn as red as his jacket in anger. “Oh, you’re gonna pay for that, Fenton!”

The call of “garbage fight!” rings out through the room before chaos descends, the horrible mix of food and mud starting to fly through the air. Danny can hear Sam try and defend the food as not garbage as he uses the fight to slip from the lunchroom into the kitchen after Jells. 

Compared to the building noise of the lunchroom it’s quiet as he sneaks back to find the little blob by a floating lady wearing an apron. The lady looks like she would work in a cafeteria if she wasn’t green-skinned and looking lost at a bulletin board. Danny lets out a low whistle to call Jells back to him and gains the lady’s attention as the blob zips over to float around his head. 

Danny looks around for anyone else in the area and finds no one, so he pulls on his transformation for his ghostly form in black. “Can I help you?” Danny asks, setting his cane aside for favour of his natural floating. 

“Hello dearie,” the lunch lady ghost says, in English thankfully since his Ghost Speak is still lacking, “I’m a little confused. Today is the day for meatloaf. ‘Meatloaf Monday’, you know? Like ‘Fish Fingers and Fries Friday’.” She says with a smile that’s dropped as she glances at the board again. “Only. I’m not seeing any meatloaf here. Was there a change in the menu?”

“Um. Yes? There was,” he hesitantly says before adding “I was told it was temporary.” 

As if flipping a switch, the lunch lady visibly goes from slight concern to ferocious anger, red eyes glowering at him. “They changed the menu?!”

“Temporarily!”

She starts shouting, her presence changing as she does from a plain lady to somewhat fantastical with flaming hair, growing larger and projecting anger physically through the air. “That menu hasn’t been changed in fifty years! The menu is perfect! It doesn’t need changing!” 

“It’s only temporary!” He tries again as he backs away a few steps, pushing Jells from his shoulder to behind his back, the little blob squeaking as Danny tries to hide them. 

“Did you change the menu?!”

“No!”

“Who changed the menu?!”

“She did!” A voice says and both turn to Sam and Tucker standing off to the side. 

Sam’s mouth drops open in shock at her friend. “Tucker!”

“What? It’s true!” 

“Get out of here!” Danny yells. 

“Who are you?” Sam shouts back. 

“You changed the menu?!”

“And I’d do it again!” Sam declares in the face of anger, never one to back down from opposition. “People need to eat more vegetables!”

“Wasn’t Dash served a literal tray of mud?” Tuckers asks.

The lunch lady throws an arm out and Danny tracks it to see a stack of dishes starting to glow green ominously before steadily lifting into the air. Telekinesis? Talk about unfair! Wait, can I do that? He doesn’t have a second more to think about it before the dishes are sent hurling towards his friends. Without thinking much, Danny flies faster than he’s attempted in practice to beat the plates and saves his friends. It works out better than he hopes when he actually catches the dishes, but the anger is still coming off the ghost. “Get out of here!” He growls to them and his friends start backing away towards where the door is. Jells is a green blur as they rocket out to safety beyond his friends’ field of vision. Thank the stars they’re safe. 

“Woah!”

“There are rules for lunch!” The lady shrieks from behind him. “It’s sacred! You can’t just change things up!” 

Sam stops at that, turning around sharply with a finger raised. “I’ll have you know—!”

“Not the time, Sam!” Tucker hisses, grabbing her arm to pull her along backwards. “Fleeing, remember?” 

“People who change my menu don’t get to flee!” The lady roars.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees movement and turns to find the school ovens moving towards them, lit with bright green fire. Oh shit, the fire’s gonna—! He tackles his friends out of the way as the green flames shoot out from the ovens like fireballs. Danny then grabs Sam and Tucker and pulls them through the wall with him. They land in the hall and Danny can hear the ovens hit the wall on the other side, surprisingly not crashing through like a wrecking ball. 

“Oh my god!”

“Huh, that actually worked,” Danny smiles, looking down at his hands. He’s practiced going through things, mainly to stop going through things, but that’s the first time he’s been more intentional about making something else intangible on purpose, like a human. 

“You didn’t know it would work?!” Sam shrieks in his face, having grabbed the front of his suit much like Dash had grabbed him before.

“Hang on, a little less judgement from the gal who started this whole thing would be nice,” Danny snarks. 

“Menus are supposed to change!” Sam rallies in her anger, hands flying in the air as she drops him. “Criteria for healthy eating has changed as research has progressed!”

“Didn’t that guy say someone was served mud?” Danny asks, pointing his thumb at Tucker. 

Sam’s eyes narrow on Danny, not even acknowledging the question. “And just who are you?”

Wait, they can’t tell? “I’m—” There’s a distant crash before the lights flicker out in the hall. Suddenly the lockers around them start shaking open, their contents flying out and down the hall to where the lunch lady ghost has reappeared. “Screwed.”

“You shall learn why meat is the most powerful of the food groups!” She yells and suddenly meat is flying out from behind them to her like a magnet. 

“Look at all that glorious meat!” Tucker gasps in awe of the horrifying meat-filled whirlwind. 

“Ugh, that’s disgusting!” Sam recoils as the meat sticks to the lady like an armour until she’s just a vaguely human shaped Goliath of a being made of meat. 

“Why is there steak? There’s never steak on the menu here unless it’s Salisbury steak! That’s a fucking medium rare porterhouse!” Tucker gasps dramatically, eyes following different slabs of meat as they fly. “I bet it was Lancer!” he declares.

“Why is it all red meat!?”

“Not the time!” Danny shouts at them. “Weren’t you fleeing?!”

“Perish!” The horde of school supplies sucked from the lockers hurtles towards them and knocks Tucker into the lockers. Her arm gains knife claws and Danny is barely in time to save Sam from the blow by making them intangible. 

“Oof, that was close!”

“Look out!” Tucker yells and Danny looks up in time to see the lunch lady’s foot before it kicks him. He doesn’t have time to avoid the hit, but he avoids hitting the lockers by phasing through them. When he flies back, the lady and Sam are nowhere to be found, the hallway is a mess, and Lancer is there with Dash. Noticing that they’re all looking around for where he is, Danny quickly fades back into human-form, the bright lights from his earliest transformations dimmed down more to a shimmer across him as he reverts back and steps around the corner. Oh wait, my cane is still by the lunchroom! “What’s up?” He signs to Tucker. “Did you find Sam?”

“Danny? How- where did you—?”

“Mr Fenton! Here I was wondering if I’d have to track you down! You and Mr Foley are coming with me.” 

“Why?” Danny signs.

“Come on.”

“He asked why,” Tucker tells Lancer and the man pauses. 

“Right, we’re going to need some extra help, aren’t we?” He says flatly. “Follow me, boys,” Lancer says and leads the three of them back to his office. 

“Where’s your cane?” Tucker asks, offering some support to Danny as they go.

“Cafeteria,” Danny spells as he holds onto Tucker gratefully. “Dropped.”

“Damn. We’re gonna have to go grab it.”

“No time,” he signs with a shrug and waves to Mr Lancer leading them down the hall. “He’s not stopping.”

“I told you you were gonna pay for that,” Dash mutters smugly as they walk, almost shoulder-checking Danny. 

“Fuck you,” Danny signs, relishing the ability to do so with Lancer right there. It’ll only work until Lancer decides to learn or someone points out the curse, but to a degree he should be able to plead ignorance the first time they’d call him out on it. That time will come sooner than later though with the way Tucker’s laughing, Danny thinks as he elbows his friend. 

In his office, Lancer has them sit down while Dash stands behind them like some mafia enforcer. He then goes to a file cabinet and pulls a couple out before starting. “Tucker Foley: chronic tardiness, talking in class, and loitering by the girls’ locker room. Danny Fenton: a recent ban on holding breakable items in class, but no other items on record.” 

Danny blinks. Hold on, that’s not—

“You two have had no severe mischief before today, both doing well in middle school for the school’s reputation, but—” here Lancer’s voice raises as he drops the files he was glancing at onto his desk, “why did the two of you conspire to destroy the school's cafeteria?!”

Just what happened in there after I left for it to be destroyed? Surely it’s just a mess. “I didn’t do anything!” Danny signs.

“We didn’t!”

“Mr Foley, we have witnesses of you calling for a ‘garbage fight’.”

“Stop-stop-stop!” Danny signs quickly before patting his friend’s shoulder. “Why is Dash here?”

Mr Lancer sighs and sits back from where he was leaning forward. “Where’s your notebook, Mr Fenton?”

Danny shrugs while Tucker speaks up. “He was asking why Dash is still here.” 

“Mr Baxter was a witness and—”

“And why are you reading that with him here?” Danny continues signing carefully and simply enough for Tucker to get the gist while Lancer searches for scrap paper. “And why are my medical problems there as if they’re a disciplinary issue?”

“You know, these are valid questions,” Tucker says after stumbling through Danny’s incorrect spelling of the word ‘disciplinary’. “He hasn’t even noticed you’re without your cane either.”

“You’ve dropped 34 beakers and other fragile items since school started!” Lancer says accusingly, skipping right over the missing cane. “At some point we’ve got to suspect it’s on purpose.”

34? Huh. I didn’t think it was that many. Whoops. “Where’s Jazz?”

“Jazz? We don’t need to get your sister involved.”

“Where’s my parents? I didn’t do anything about the… mess? But now I have a problem with you.”

“Oooh,” Tucker says as he finishes. “What problems?”

“Legal,” Danny spells for him and Tucker is too surprised to say it for Lancer and Dash. “Jazz read laws and told me a little. This,” Danny points to the folder and at Dash, “is wrong. Jazz’ll know.” 

“What is Mr Fenton saying?” Mr Lancer asks Tucker.

Danny puts a hand up to Tucker to stop him and reaches for the paper that was scrounged up. ‘Get Jazz. Get our parents. Now. You gotta problem.’ 

“Don’t you mean ‘you’ve got a problem’?” Danny shakes his head and points at Mr Lancer. “Don’t you know it’s rude to point, Mr Fenton? And what do you mean I have a problem?”

“It’s actually not rude in ASL, Mr Lancer,” Tucker pipes up, happy to tell a teacher they’re wrong at every chance he can. “Pointing takes the place of common English pronouns like ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘you’, and ‘it’,” he recites. “It’s one of the first things we learned about it this summer when looking up the language.” 

It’s easy to see that Mr Lancer doesn’t have anything to say about that. “Regardless,” he continues, “I’m failing to see what problem there is other than you two destroying the cafeteria.”

‘Probably privacy law violation, maybe more if you’re counting my medically backed problems as a disipline issue. 😠’ Danny writes. And while I still feel like an interpreter isn’t needed for class yet, maybe Jazz was right about needing one so they'd be here for things like this. Tuck can try all he likes but this isn’t his job when he should also be worrying about his own part in this. 

“What privacy law violation?”

Danny turns in his chair and dramatically waves his hands as he presents Dash, a known and overlooked bully, still being in the room when their records were read as supposed evidence. Then he circles the ‘Get Jazz’ on the paper.

“I’m certain we don’t have to pull your sister from her classes for this.”

Danny insistently taps the paper again. “Yeah dude—Mr Lancer, I don’t think he’s gonna do anything else now. Want me to go grab her?”

“Don’t think you’re getting out of trouble for setting up the destruction of the cafeteria, Mr Foley. Mr Baxter can collect Miss Fenton,” he says with a nod for the boy to leave and he does. 

“And you’ll get Ishiyama,” Danny signs when Dash is gone so he can send Lancer away too, spelling out her name for Tucker and adding the signs for ‘his boss’. I’ll have to think of a way to get Tucker to leave too if I’m going to bounce and get Sam. I’ll just have to be back before they get back hopefully. 

“I don’t think we need to—” Mr Lancer sees Danny's head shake and reach for the paper again only to just tap at the word ‘now’. “Don’t leave, Mr Fenton,” he says tiredly before leaving the room, their records left sitting out and open on the desk. 

“Damn, man! Up top!” Tucker says and they high-five. “Okay, I need to go find Sam,” he says and heads for the door. 

“Where’s Sam?” Danny signs.

“With the meat monster lady! Gotta go!” Tucker says and rushes out, leaving the door open. 

… I guess that’s my opening? Leaving a note that simply says ‘brb, getting cane’ to cover his bases, Danny transforms back into his more ghostly form and flies off towards the main office. He looks for a security room and hovers behind the chair to search through the cameras. He spies Tucker running through the halls first, looking ridiculous like he’s following some sort of smell like a bloodhound. If he can smell meat so well maybe I can use him to find and save Sam! I just need to know how to not get him stuck in the crosshairs. Danny tries to think of a plan as he flies off to where Tucker is likely to be heading and approximate time to travel through the walls. When he finds him, he’s sniffing around an intersection.

“Hey! You’re that guy from earlier!”

“Yeah, are you trying to sniff out the lunch lady?”

“Not just trying, I will! I’m a meat connoisseur!” He boasts, jabbing a thumb at his chest proudly. 

“Right,” Danny says, laying the sarcasm on thickly. “Then which—”

“You don’t believe me?” Tucker laughs like a sideshow showman before taking a few breaths in through his nose. “Uh, are you a vegetarian or something? Vegan? My parlor trick isn’t working.”

Huh. He should have said the sloppy joe’s thing like he did earlier. Ghost thing? It’s not like I’ve eaten like this in a while. “Something like that,” he says flatly, not wanting to waste time on it. “Can you sniff the lunch lady out or not?”

“No problem, you can count on me!” Tucker leads them to the left and around a few more turns. “We should be close,” he says as they walk into a storage unit not far from the cafeteria, which in hindsight should have been more obvious, and get to a large cold storage room.

“This feels impractical for a school,” Danny mutters. 

“This is exactly how it should be!” Tucker proclaims. “Growing kids need plenty of meat!”

“Sure, but do we really go through this much?”

“Eh, it probably isn’t all meat, but I’m pretty sure the concessions food for the home games come from here too, so it’s probably fine. See?” He says while pointing to a couple columns of boxes. “Ground beef, beef patties, and hot dogs make up a lot of the boxes. What’s shocking is the amount of pretty good meat!”

“Is this your weird-kid-card?” Danny asks despite knowing already.

“Probably. What’s yours?”

“Being dead’s not enough?” He jokes.

That throws Tucker off, the boy whipping around to look at him. “…what?!” 

A cackling laugh is heard further in along with what can only be Sam, her voice raised in indignation and a sense of justice. “Gotta fly!” Danny says and jets off through the shelves. 

“Wait!” Tucker yells, but Danny ignores it. 

“Nonsense, child! Meat is good for growing children!”

“We don’t need it!” Sam argues back to the lady holding her hostage.

“It makes children smile and helps them grow!”

“It’s not necessary!”

“Lies!” Danny sneaks around and assesses the situation. The lunch lady has Sam wrapped up and trapped into a mound of meat up to her neck. Now that’s just gross. How’re you gonna say you’re going to feed people that now? What a waste.

“No, that’s a fact!”

“You will be silent!” The lunch lady yells, her fire-like hair coming back into action. “Students need discipline! They need manners and respect! You know where that comes from?”

“Uh, their peers?”

“From meat!”

“What! That’s totally not true!”

“It is, I say it’s so! Now, since you’re so obviously against red meat, will it be chicken or fish? Pork?”

“None! Let me go!”

“Mind if I cut in?” Danny shouts to be heard. “From what I can tell, you’re both wrong!”

“WHAT?!” The ladies shout, instantly mad at the newcomer together.

“What ‘what’?” He says back. “Haven’t y’all heard of compromise? Both arguments have good points and both have bad points!”

“How dare you!”

“Listen here, young man—”

“Meat is only one of multiple food groups!” Danny yells quickly, noticing Tucker coming around the corner. Hm. I don’t want to endanger him, but I might need his help. Maybe I could be the distraction as he frees Sam and takes her away? “People need to eat a balanced diet if they want to be healthy! It just happens to be that people can find the stuff we need from meat in other things!” 

“People need meat!”

“No, people need protein. And an easy way for people to get protein is in meat. But people who don’t or can’t eat meat can find them elsewhere.” The fire on the lunch lady’s head has reverted back to her original hair, so Danny is taking it as a win as he sees Tuck sneak up to Sam, covering her mouth for a second and speaking before…brandishing silverware? He knows that’s raw, right? “There are also other nutrients that people need too that can be found in both meat and veggies too, right? Like, uh…” Shit, what was it? I should have paid attention to that unit better.  

“Iron can be found in both red meat and leafy greens,” Sam says, making Tucker have to duck behind her. 

“Right! And we need stuff from other food groups to be healthy too, like, uh… vitamin C? That’s oranges, right?”

“Bananas also give you a source of potassium,” Sam offers reluctantly, probably figuring out what Danny’s trying to do. 

Now what? “So we’ve established that it’s the nutrients in the food that people need, not a particular kind and that the whole reason we have groups is for identification and an easy way to plan and balance things, right? As a lunch lady you’re supposed to know this, so their plate is balanced, yeah?” 

“That is correct…” she muses. 

“I’m sure you did a wonderful job with the menu to be able to keep things interesting while also being healthy enough for kids.”

“I do!” Ah! Red eyes are back! “That was until this child changed my menu!” Danny quickly zips between them, guarding Sam behind him from the lady. 

“We haven’t even gotten to how she’s wrong too! I said you’re both wrong, remember?” 

“I am not wrong! People can live without eating animals!”

“No, you are wrong but not in the way she’s trying to defend,” Danny hisses, trying to emphasise that they’re trying to placate the ghost until they’re all safe, not further antagonise her. “Not everyone can live a vegan lifestyle even if they wanted to,” Danny says louder, his hands up in surrender towards the lunch lady as he still directs his words behind him. “Technically it’s a specialty diet, right? Not everyone has the mental energy or money to change their whole diet. Besides, there are folks who live where it’s hard to get food like that.”

“People should have the option—”

“Exactly!” Danny interrupts before she can get going. “I bet this all started because you didn’t have many options for your diet,” he says, knowing it’s correct because she’s said as much before, though not as often as she just flat went against meat. “A good goal would be to include more options, not take them away!”

“But what about animal cruelty?”

“A noble cause to fight against,” Danny nods, “but your energy is misdirected here, no? Wasn’t there mud in the kitchen? People were served it!” 

“That—! Okay, well that was a joke,” she relents, looking embarrassed, “but I didn’t think the school board would take it literally!” 

“Sounds like a separate problem with the board to me,” he shrugs. “So! Pop quiz, since we are children and are in school,” Danny says with a clap of his hands. “Meatloaf Monday: how would you two change the recipe to have a meat and a non-meat option?”

“I’m not a cook!” 

“You have a cook you can collaborate with right now,” he says tersely to Sam, who can’t seem to get the point of not being contentious for once. Come on Tucker, I’m going to foster a global peace deal before you get her free. “Tofu is popular for vegans, right?” Danny starts prodding. 

“Tofu meatloaf?” The lady says, her nose scrunched up as her eyes dim back from their glowing red. “That’s a soy-meat thing, yes?”

“Yeah. You could also do a chickpea-black bean thing too,” Sam says, seeming more mellow when the lady takes it into consideration. “You have to watch the texture of the beans part at the end, so the texture is more meat-like. We use a gluten free recipe at our house sometimes because we have a cousin who can’t do gluten. Traditional meatloaf recipes have gluten in them which make them inaccessible to people who are physically intolerant.”

“As opposed to morally intolerant,” Tucker mutters just loud enough to get the lady’s attention. 

“You!” She exclaims, her fiery hair burning up again as things start rattling on the shelves. Wind whips around the room as she shrieks “you’re trying to trick me!”

“I can’t take you anywhere,” Danny groans as he dodges slabs of meat getting picked up telekinetically to form the same meat-monster as earlier. “Y’all can’t not be antagonistic for a moment?” Danny snipes as he looks on at the changing lady. “She was calm! She was considering it!” The monster roars and it’s chilling. “Run!” His friends don’t argue as they start for the exit, but a wall of meat beats them to the door with such a sickening thud that he doesn’t want to ever hear again. “Shit! Remember earlier?” He asks rhetorically as he grabs onto each of them, not waiting for a response nor noticing their large and frantic looks. “Hold on!” Danny flies them through the wall before dropping them. “Now get out of here!” He shouts before zipping right back into what he thinks will be a fight but ends up being an empty room, the meat thrown around having also disappeared. “That… can’t be good,” he states dumbly, looking around. 

Danny starts flying around the halls until he hears Mr Lancer yelling for them. Oh yeah, I better get back. After a quick detour to snag his cane from the kitchen, Danny lands in a bathroom closer to Lancer’s office, transforms back, and makes it seem like he’s just come from around a corner. He waves to Lancer’s angry face with a placid smile before he realises his vision is getting blurrier. The last thing that floats in his mind is ‘whoops’. 

Chapter Text

Danny wakes up in the nurse’s office with Jazz’s voice in the main room, getting the rundown from Lancer about why she was pulled out of class. Tucker sounds to be there too, filling in what he knew and what Lancer seems to ‘forget’ to add. Danny sits up, grabs his cane, and hits the end on the floor for some noise to grab their attention. 

Jazz is the first in, used to the noise from him getting her attention upstairs. Mr Lancer, Sam, and Tucker walk in after her. “Danny!” Her shoulder jabs into his neck as she tackles him on the bed. “Are you okay? Are you in pain? What happened? You scared the he— heck out of Mr Lancer, collapsing on the floor like that! Has this happened to you before? You need to let us know that that happens!”

He looks past her head to Tucker and signs behind her back to him. “He says he can’t answer you like this. Also wants the… name? Uh. Hold on, go back again?”

Jazz pulls back and he signs again for her. “Oh, that’s ‘bus’, right? And the bus is moving?”

“Are you asking for the number of the bus that hit you?” Mr Lancer asks and Danny awards him with a thumbs up.

“You sign?!” Jazz’s head whips around to him, her hair smacking Danny in the face and Sam snickers as he shoves her head to the side. 

“No, but that’s a common enough joke for someone waking up in pain,“ Mr Lancer clarifies, “to ask if someone got the number of the bus that hit them.”

“So you are hurt!” She exclaims as she turns to him again.

Danny holds his hands up and makes several aborted signs before just sighing and asking for something to write with. “Oh, no problem dude, we found your bag. It’s a little muddy with the whole caf’ thing, but I think your journals sh— stuff’s fine,” Tucker says as he brings it to him, eye glancing to Mr Lancer. “What happened though? You weren’t there when I got back to the office.”

“You two weren’t supposed to leave the office,” Mr Lancer grumbles as Danny fishes for a pen from the bottom of his bag to write with.

‘Pain about the same, just a wave of it and tiredness. Didn’t notice limit until too late. Went to get cane? Left note on desk??’ 

Lancer looks surprised as Jazz reads it out loud, which is annoying because he left it on his desk. “You did?”

Jazz’s eyes narrow. “Why’d you have to go find your cane?”

‘No chance to get it when L dragged us to his office.’

“Yeah, I helped him get there,” Tucker says. “We didn’t get time to grab it because Lancer told us to follow him immediately and it didn’t seem like we could argue with him.”

“He didn’t let you find your cane before walking half the school to get to his office?” Jazz asks to clarify. 

‘No chance to ask. He and Dash brought Tuck and I to office, read out records with Dash in room. Medical related info in displinary record? Didn’t want to call anyone else, made him get y’all. Mom and dad here?’ 

“No, I haven’t reached them yet, but I’m taking you home now.”

“I can stay,” he signs.

“No, Danny,” Jazz says adamantly, “you fainted from overdoing it! I’m going to bring you home and you’ll rest!” 

“You have class.”

“We can’t let you just take him home early; your parents—”

“—have signed off on me being able to take him home,” Jazz interrupts Lancer’s denial. “I don’t do it much, but it’s in our records that I have permission if the cause is good enough, and I think that this qualifies for that, given it’s a medical problem. And as for my classes, Danny, I’ll miss them. I’m sure they would understand but you’re my priority at the moment and we have to talk to mom and dad about your… meeting with Mr Lancer.” 

Jazz gets her way after Lancer checks with the office and finds that the Fentons gave her the ability and signs them out, leaving Tucker still needing to get in contact with his parents over the cafeteria issue. Despite his stubbornness, Danny pretty much crashes when they get home, going to put his bag down in his room and waking up hours later to Jazz sneaking dinner into his room and his shoes still on. “Sorry, I tried not to wake you,” she says sheepishly before entering fully and going to sit at the desk. “You must have been tired if you fell asleep again.”

“It’s fine,” Danny signs with a yawn, toeing off his sneakers carelessly and flinging them towards the closet area. “What did mom and dad say?”

Jazz’s smile thins. “They aren’t going to do anything.”

Danny blinks. “Nothing? And they understand what’s wrong?”

“They said I could deal with it if I ‘think it’s needed’ but they don’t see it as important. And that it would take away too much time from their research at ‘such a critical time’,” Jazz repeats, her voice strained. “Mom thinks it was just a simple mistake, and Dad was saying he ‘doesn’t get what the big deal is’.” It’s silent for a little bit as Danny reaches for something to nibble on. There isn’t much to say, really. Danny knows that Jazz wouldn’t be this open with him about their parents’ dismissal if it weren’t for him blowing up at her one Christmas after finding out that his parents weren’t the ones who picked out their gifts. He’d already grown up to that point knowing that Santa wasn’t real because of their parents’ annual holiday fights, already told by Jazz that he couldn’t say anything about it to his classmates who didn’t know Santa was faked, but finding out that his parents weren’t even the ones setting up the gifts that year sucked. She later scolded him for his language he had used during his ranting that he had picked up from some movie Tucker and he had watched but agreed that if they were going to be shitty parents at times then she wouldn’t cover for them, even if she tries to make up for what they don’t do. “I would love to get you full justice for this, Danny, but I legally can’t, even if I can stand in for them occasionally on minor things.”

“I know.” Danny sighs before signing, “sister, not parent”.

“Right, ‘sister, not parent’,” she repeats, remembering the phrase when she had learned about parentification and had her first freak-out about how much she was taking care of him when their parents got too into their projects. He’s had to remind her off and on since, but most of the time things don’t get that far. Danny has a feeling it’s a reoccurring mantra for her regardless. “I will have to email them from mom’s account again to pressure them about the interpreter thing. And really stress that they should do things better and by the book. I just can’t lawyer up or anything.”

Danny tilts his head in consideration. “Do we have…” he pauses to think if he’s even learned the sign for ‘lawyer’ to even try to grasp it in his brain, but gives up after a second and fingerspells “lawyers?” 

“Hm? I dunno,” she says with a shrug, pulling up a leg in the chair to wrap her arms around, resting her chin on her knee. “If we do, I’ll bet that they’re, like, patent lawyers or something.” 

Danny rolls his eyes. “Pointless,” he spells out. 

“Pointless…?” she asks and waits for him to nod in confirmation, “yeah, I guess they would be then.” 

“Do you have--?” Danny’s brain blanks out and he leans over to grab the sticky note pad. ‘Have Ishiyama’s email?’ 

“Probably, but if not, it should be in the school directory. You think I should go right to the principal?”

‘Lancer’s VP? Go step above, right?’

“Not always,” Jazz gently corrects like usual. “Sometimes there’s a better person to connect with in another department than just going above their heads. Like… say Lancer was being harassed: he wouldn’t necessarily go to Ishiyama even though they’re friends, he’d go to Human Resources for a third party to become involved and file documentation if he couldn’t get it to stop on his own. Did Lancer seem like he was going to change on his own?”

Danny shrugs. ‘He overlooks wrong things all the time. Esp with Dash.’ 

“Right, there’s that too.” Jazz hums in thought. “If he was just a teacher then it would be going to the VP, right? Or I suppose I would need to reach out to the IEP person to get things noted and settled for the interpreter thing maybe. Or—”

‘Just email Ishiyama. If not her, she can forward email to others.’

“I guess. If I’m also writing from mom’s account, then I should also make sure things are set up in a way that it would make sense of her doing it.”

‘Will you tell mom you’re using her account?’

“Mom said I could,” Jazz tells him, “I just don’t think I should let the school know it’s me talking, you know?”

Danny gets it: adults listen to adults, not kids. “If they want to meet?” He signs. 

“I’ll volunteer myself as proxy since mom would probably do it anyway,” she says easily, the slight bitter note in her voice evident even to Danny. 

‘You have info for it?’

“Yeah, I got the ADA references and stuff in your binder.” Danny rolls his eyes and Jazz kicks out a foot at him that he has to dodge, rolling out of the way while trying not to spill the water she brought. “That binder is important for your health and schooling and you’re not getting rid of it again, buster!” He puts on his best ‘who, me?’ expression and she scoffs. “I know it was you, don’t lie!”

“Said nothing!” he signs.

“That doesn’t matter when facial expression is a major part of your new language!” Jazz pauses a moment, mid reach for something softer to chuck at her brother. “Oh wait, body language is a huge part of language anyway. Huh. I didn’t even think about that.” 

“Nerd,” he spells out quickly before pointing to her and she plays along with a theatrical gasp, clutching imaginary pearls.

“How dare?!” He sticks his tongue out at her and she blindly reaches for something to throw, luckily getting his stuffed rocket instead of the pen mug on his desk so it bounces off of him harmlessly as he guards his drink. He waves at her to stop as she reaches for something else and she almost doesn’t, but there’s no more squishy stuff to throw. Danny sees her eying the food for one second and he bites down on the lip of the cup to hold it in his teeth to sign for her to stop frantically. “Be grateful I’m not that mean,” she says with a small grin.

Danny tilts his head and shrugs. “You throw, you clean,” he signs, not having the shared vocabulary yet to tell her it would mean he’d get her back twofold if the food hit the bed. He chugs the rest of the water as she eyes his bed consideringly.

“Arguably, your sheets should probably be washed anyway; boys stink, and you sweat in your sleep. Not to mention teen boys tend to--” she starts with a smirk, and he jumps up to hold the cup over her threateningly. “Your school stuff is right here,” she defends with her hands up to shield, holding still while looking at the cup, but he tilts it a little bit more. “Fine! Truce,” she relents, rolling her eyes and shoving him in the chest after he tilts the cup back up again. Danny goes with it and falls back onto the bed with a snarky grin, tossing the empty cup back at her and he bounces. She shrieks for half a second as she fumbles to catch the cup before she realises it’s empty. Jazz puts on a sigh. “I don’t know how, but I will get you back for that.”

“You can try,” Danny grins as he taunts her, making his signs slow and pronounced.

“I can get back to it now that you’ve shown your trick, Danny,” she casually threatens in an airy, superior tone. “But it wouldn’t be revenge to continue,” she faux-justifies, “after all, it’s a very important conversation!” Her smile is just a tad under manic as she leans forward.

“Nononononono—!” He signs repeatedly, squishing one ear to his shoulder while covering the other.

“It’s vital for teenagers to understand how puberty works, which would include—”

“Leave!” He pleads while gesturing to the door.

“But Danny!” she gasps in mock-horror. “How ever will you learn about yourself?!” Danny kicks out his good leg to shove the desk chair to his door, the chair nearly toppling as Jazz rebalances to stop from falling, breaking character as she laughs. “Dear god, Little Brother, you have got to get over your embarrassment for puberty! Didn’t you talk about this with a doctor? It’s a perfectly natural process—” Danny nearly bruises his chest with how fervently he signs that he is fine as she breaks again to laugh. Seeing her about to start again, he signs that he is done with an exaggerated motion doubling as him shooing her out the door. “Yeah, yeah, okay, I’m gone!” She says with a smile, her hands up in defence before reeling back the conversation as she leaves. “Let me know if there’s anything else you want to include with my email from mom, okay? I’m going to send it sometime tomorrow.”

Danny gives his assent and she leaves, shutting the door behind her. It’s quiet again as he contemplates getting up to work on his homework before a familiar trill sounds from some corner of his room. Danny looks around for a moment before clocking a curious feeling separate from his own in the air. The noise sounds again and Danny’s gaze zeros onto his shelves, spying Jells behind some model rockets.

Danny beckons Jells over, trying his best to push his emotions outward for the little blob ghost to pick up. He can’t tell if it got through to them but Jells does fly through his things as they rocket over into his chest for a hug. Danny tries his best to praise the little blob for staying hidden when Jazz was here as they start zooming through his hands and stomach in little loop-de-loops, leaving the areas slightly cool for the duration they pass through. Idly he thinks about trying to teach Jells minor signs like you would a dog but doesn’t quite know if it would be demeaning to their intelligence. I s’pose I wouldn’t know if it would be too much for them either, but Dr Geise did say it could be worth the effort, right? I guess I’ll have to fit that in somewhere. For now, though, Danny settles into their little game of ‘make a noise and see what happens’ for the night before going to bed.

“…all because of one girl’s dedication to—wait, stop. Would ‘dedication’ actually be right there? She’s certainly driven, but—”

Danny walks by the lady talking with a camera man on the way to get a better look at whatever’s happening at the school. It looks like a couple different encampments bisected by the walkway to the main door. Each side has bright signs and megaphones, but the longer he looks at them the more dread he feels. Please let it be a coincidence. Pleasepleaseplease— He spots his friends on either side, one in a group of people with signs talking about meat and the other on the side with people with signs depicting the Earth and praising veganism, and sighs. One day. They only did this in one day. Fantastic showing, but why is it even more polar that yesterday? I thought Sam was making progress!

“Excuse me, could I get a quote from you for my article?” A voice on his left says and Danny jumps, turning to see the reporter from his walk up with a notebook out, looking at him expectantly.

“I can’t speak,” Danny signs.

“Oh! You’re Deaf?”

“No, can hear, can’t speak. No voice. Mute,” he spells to their continued confusion.

“Danny! There you are!” Sam shouts, passing her megaphone onto another as she leaves to approach, which makes Tucker realise he’s standing there.

“No, Sam! You can’t have him!” He yells dramatically as he comes forward, eying the journalist eagerly. “Danny! Come to my side, quick!”

“What are you two doing?” Danny asks, gesturing to the makeshift rallies on either side of them.

“We’re protesting!” Tucker cheers. “Yesterday’s food was hardly food; things need to go back to what they were before anything worse happens.”

Sam scoffs. “While yesterday was problematic, people need change and need to be aware of their dietary choice’s impact on the Earth!”

“Grass-on-a-bun, Sam! Grass on a f—” Tuckers quickly remembers the journalist staring at them, a camera not too far away, “freaking bun. At least what we had before was edible.”

“Are these your friends?” The journalist asks Danny, and he nods slightly as the other two dive deeper into their long-held argument, occasionally falling back into off-topic and petty jabs. “Oh, so you can hear. I don’t know sign language though, so would you mind writing an answer if I ask you something?”

Danny looks back at the journalist and shrugs, signing “what’s the question?” with a purposeful head tilt.

“Um.” Danny can almost see the loading sign over the journalist’s face. “Maybe just whatever you want to tell me about what you know for how this came to be?” They ask, extending their notebook out, a fresh page and pen at the ready.

How about no? Instead of taking the notebook from them, Danny pulls out his conversation journal and a glittery pen. ‘Can you be any more specific? It’s your job to question us, right?’

“Ah,” they say, turning a little pink. “Right. Uhm… if these are your friends,” they pause and he nods to confirm they are again, “where would you fall? Would you go left or right?” They say, gesturing to either side of the walkway.

Huh. That sounds vaguely political, Danny thinks as he writes out his answer. Was it a coincidence that Sam’s on the left side of the walkway? Tucker’s not like that though. There goes moving off to the side with this lest it look like picking a side symbolically. Danny holds up his page for them to read. ‘I try not to take sides with my friends. They’ve been fighting about this for years.’

“Right,” they say slowly. “I bet that gets tough though.”

Danny rolls his eyes skyward as he nods. He writes as the journalist looks around at everything. ‘I love them both. They are stubborn. Does the menu need updates to change with an increase of people who need more choices for whatever reason? Yes. This is unnecessary.’

“’This’?”

Danny gestures to the rallies. ‘Too big. Too polar. Wrong message.’

“And what should the message be?”

‘Lunch should be healthy for people -- adapt with the times and science. Lunch shouldn’t be a problem, debate, or stressor.’

“Would you say—?”

The journalist is cut off as the wind picks up out of nowhere, the area darkening with the sudden accumulation of clouds. A loud, cackling laugh rings out as Danny feels the same rush of cold on his neck as in the lunchroom, making him gasp and look around. “It’s lunchtime!” The lady from yesterday materialises with a booming call. 

It’s only eight in the morning, Danny thinks as he slips away into the school to change out of view. In no world is it even close to lunch yet. I hope they cancel today for this though. By the time he flies back out there’s another meat monster terrorising the fleeing protestors. “Hey!”

“You!” The meat monster launches a fist towards Danny that he has to dodge.

“Didn’t we talk about this yesterday?” He asks as he loops around again to miss getting slapped like a bug.

“You tried to trick me!”

“I tried to resolve things peacefully!” He yells back, landing a surprise kick and knocking the meat-lady over.

“Kids don’t need peace, they need meat!” The lady roars as she gets up to start fighting again.

“Again, I think you’ll find that they need both!” Danny shouts just before he’s punted upwards, straight above the school. He flies back quickly, but still doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do to stop her since talking hasn’t worked. He’s already told her the change was temporary and she seemed to be okay before with the whole nutrient discussion, but now it feels like we’re back to square one. Danny slams into the ghost once more and suddenly meat is going everywhere. Again, he thinks as he’s coming out of a daze in what looks like a crater, this is such a waste of meat.

“This is such a mess, young man. Are you okay?” The lunch lady asks, looking down at Danny in concern.

He shoots her a thumbs up. “Yup! I think I’m doing good!”

Like a switch flipped, her eyes are red and she’s yelling again. “Tough! My diet of doom is balanced with you out of the picture!” She raises her arms and the meat she was controlling surrounds Danny, tumbling sickeningly into piles that make relatively miniature meat monsters all around him. Oh, the sound! Danny shudders in revulsion. 

Swiftly, he flies out of the crater with the meat monsters hot on his tail. Danny tries to remember what his mom has mentioned about fighting multiple opponents, but it’s almost horror-inducing how it feels to punch into raw meat and have it give way and reform again. This should be enough to make anyone squeamish, Danny thinks as he watches a monster he has downed reassemble itself. 

Another monster lands a lucky hit while he watches the grotesque vision in front of him and Danny’s now straining against a few of them as they start flying off with him. They don’t let him orientate himself as they toss him between one another in fun now over four hundred yards in the air, swinging him upside down and sideways. Just as he remembers he could probably try and turn intangible, something heavy smacks him in the face and he scrambles to catch the metal device before it drops.

Danny recognises it after a second as a Fenton Thermos, a container that’s supposed to trap ghosts for further study that his dad was talking about last week in the lab. “Sweet!” He fumbles with it wildly, trying to remember out how it is supposed to work quickly when his stomach swoops and Danny realises he’s been dropped. “Shit!” 

He barely has the time to turn intangible as he plummets into the ground. He uses the drop to gain ground, coming up away from his landing zone by—…Jazz?? Danny sees his parents there with his sister and connects the thermos to them. “Thanks for the thermos!” He shouts, waving it to them as he zooms back to where the main action is again. “It’s time to put an end to this!” He shouts, sounding more confident than he feels as he tightens his grip on the containment device he doesn’t know how to use and raises it up in front of himself.

“Soup is not on the menu!”

“Here’s to nothing,” Danny mutters as he watches her gear up for another attack. He uncaps the thermos and channels his energy into it, like how he tries with talking to Jells. Surprisingly, the device lights up and a white-blue beam is released that immediately latches onto the lunch lady and pulls her in as she continues to yell at him.

He caps the thermos again and looks around at the trashed school yard before deciding that he’d better vacate so he’s not implicated. Danny flies back into school to his stuff and changes back, slipping the thermos into his backpack for safekeeping. Now I just have to find out when and where I can release her safely. Danny shucks that onto Future Him as he gets ready to go outside again. 

After taking another breath, Danny peaks out of the front of the school to look at the havoc the lunch lady wreaked. Tables and signs are everywhere; the ground is littered with meat products as people pick their way across the yard to pick up their personal belongings. Two people in particular notice him, jogging up from their respective groups.

“Danny?”

“Danny! Where were you?” Sam asks. “I was looking for you!” He points back to the school doors. “You were in the school?”

“Bad weather, go into the building,” Danny signs, going for ‘oblivious’ since he wasn’t sure how much of everything the two had seen.

Tucker looks slightly confused. “Bad weather?”

“Danny, there was a monster!” Sam shouts. “Made of meat!”

He tilts his head and signs, “you are meat? People are meat?”

“What? People aren’t—”

“Dude, no, she meant that there was some lady who made, like, a golem or fighting mecha suit, but outta meat.“ Tucker’s eyes light up in realisation and awe. “A meat mecha!”

Danny rolls his eyes. “Monsters aren’t real.”

“Wait, what was that sign?”

“M-o-n-s-t-e-r,” he spells for Tucker before showing the sign again. “Monster.”

“Cool, ‘monster’,” Tucker says as he copies the sign.

“Guys!” Sam snaps in front of them. “Hello? The Meat Monster?”

“Where?” Danny asks her, looking around to the flipped tables with a hand to his forehead like an explorer as she sighs in annoyance. “Looks like a small tornado happened,” he spells out. “No monster.”

“I don’t think he’s gonna believe us without proof, Sam; just like I said yesterday.”

“What happened…” what was ‘yesterday again? “before?”

“Yesterday the same meat monster lady kidnapped Sam because she changed the menu—”

“—because you told her I did!”

“Well, I wasn’t wrong:” he emphasises, “you did have the menu changed—”

“She held me hostage in a pile of meat!”

“Oh c’mon, she didn’t hold you hostage,” Tucker waves off. “That’s when there’s a clear opposing party in a negotiation that you’re being used as collateral against to get their way. You can’t be both the hostage and the opposition of this whole thing, and you were very much the opposition for the Meat Mecha Lady.”

“This way!” Danny’s dad’s voice booms out over the sound of everyone starting to clean up and the trio look over to see his family turning around the corner, his mom and Jazz following Jack who’s got a familiar beeping machine held out in front of him. Here we go. 

“Ghost directly ahead,” a robotic voice sounds out from the machine, the label on the device proclaiming it to be the FentonFinder. “You would have to be some sort of moron to not notice the ghost directly ahead,” it says as they approach the group.

“Ghost?” Tucker asks. “There was no ghost, right? It was a meat monster!”

“Meat monster?” Jack asks, looking put out over it but not otherwise questioning Tucker’s sanity. “Oh. Must not have the program set to ghosts after all if it found a meat monster. Which way did it go, son?”

Danny puts his hands up and shakes his head in denial as Sam takes over. “Danny didn’t see it, Mr Fenton: he was in the school. I think it went that way though,” she says while pointing vaguely in another direction.

“Thanks, Sam! C’mon, Mads: we got a runner!” He shouts before they take off, the last being heard as they turn another corner is Jack’s saying “maybe they’ll know where that ghost went!”

Jazz lingers with the trio, sighing and pinching the bridge of her nose as she staves off a headache. “Great. Major catastrophe at the school and they’re out chasing ghosts.”

“They don’t seriously think the Meat Mecha Lady was a ghost, right?” Tucker asks with a weak smile. 

“Probably not? I don’t think they even got a glimpse of…” Jazz trails off before focusing on the three of them. “Wait, was there really a lady with a meat mecha suit? I thought you made that up to get them to back off. I didn’t think we were a big enough town to get legit rogues.”

“Oh totally!” Tucker says with a gleam in his eye. “She had superpowers to control meat and cooking utensils! Yesterday she even kidnapped Sam for revenge and we had to rescue her!”

“You and who?” Danny signs.

“We?” Sam shrieks. “Excuse me, but what did you do?”

“Hey, I found you the second time!”

“Yeah, sure, after you threw me at her to begin with!”

“Danny, were you involved in this rescue attempt?” Jazz asks him and Danny shakes his head frantically.

“Nah, Danny was off looking for his cane, remember?” Tucker waves her worry off. “Some dude with powers came in to fight her both times, like a real superhero. He had white hair, black jumpsuit, white accents, flew around and was trying to get the lady to back off. Pulled Sam and me through a wall though, which was pretty cool.”

“He was a dick about the menu too, but yeah, I guess he helped.”

“Your ass was gonna be grass, Sam: he saved you,” Tucker corrects. “You woulda been mincemeat without him. You’re just salty because he said you were wrong too.”

“I was not wrong, I was—”

“Guys,” Jazz stresses, quickly done with their bickering. “Do you think school’s going to be cancelled today with this happening? We’re already getting into the third period. And I think I saw a crater around the side.”

“School has been declared cancelled,” Mr Lancer says, appearing right behind them like a ghost, all the kids jumping. “There are a number of things that have to be checked to make sure things are safe after… whatever it was that just happened. Those that had participated in the unsanctioned rallies, however, are being tasked with helping the clean-up process.”

“But we didn’t do this!” Sam gestures to the food-strewn and messy schoolyard.

“Ah, yes, but you did host rallies that took place during school-time without permission on school property, so it’s either get in trouble for that, or clean things up. Which would you choose, Miss Manson?” She grumbles her agreement to clean up and Mr Lancer nods. “Get to it then,” he says, dismissing the two to start helping with the groups before turning to Danny and Jazz. “I do know you weren’t involved this time, Mr Fenton. Please see that you don’t end up doing so in the future. I’m assuming you’re taking him home, Miss Fenton?” Jazz nods. “Then we’ll be seeing you tomorrow. I’ve got to go and wrangle up people and make announcements still. Have a quiet evening,” Mr Lancer says before turning to stop some of the protesters from slipping away.

“It’s not even noon,” Jazz mutters when he’s far enough away before turning to her brother. “Well… ready to get home? I think I’m going to go study at the library for a while and get something positive from today before tonight. Wanna come with or should I just drop you off?”

“I want to say home,” Danny signs and makes a face, “I’ll go with you. I have work to do.”

“Good choice.”

Jazz’s grumblings are off and on most of the day, peaking around their parents’ arrival at the library. The Drs Fenton appear at the library twice with the FentonFinder held out in front of them, the two barely looking where they were going in favour of staring at the guiding screen, nearly mowing over several people and toppling a potted plant. The second time they enter the library Jazz chews them out and the librarian on duty nearly asks them all to leave instead of just their parents.

Danny tries to appear nonchalant when they arrive each time, but he doesn’t know whether it was him, his extra guest in the thermos, or Jells floating through the shelves setting off the device, which causes him to panic internally. He remembers setting it off before, but he thought he had fiddled with the settings when they left it in the kitchen last week.

When he tunes back into her bitten off remarks and asks her to elaborate, he is hit with the shock that their dad, the most enthusiastic and gung-ho ghost hunter they’ve ever known, was so close to giving up on the idea that morning, stopped only by the appearance of a flying boy in black. Jazz doesn’t believe that there was a meat monster, but she does say that it appeared like the boy was a ghost to their dad. “But we can’t know it was a ghost!” She says again, passionately, quieting down slightly when another patron gently hushes them. “All we saw was a flying boy in a jumpsuit that took whatever device Dad was trying to capture me into. Maybe it’s just some random kid with powers who thought he could help. Should I even say ‘kid’? I didn’t really get a good look at him. Oh no, I’m also assuming they were a guy—!”

“Wait, stop.” Danny interjects after a quick wave to halt her ramble. “He, dad, uh… grabbed you?”

“He tried,” Jazz huffs, slinking a little into a slouch. “The gadget didn’t work on me. Who knows if it even works at all, but supposedly he thought I was a ghost and was going to capture me in it,” she rolls her eyes before she blinks. “Wait a sec—” she says, hefting out the textbook she started carrying around that had sign language pictures and flipping through it for a little bit. “Okay, so there is a slight difference between ‘grab’ and ‘capture’,” she says as she looks over the entries, “which I suppose would make sense given the different contexts for the same or similar uses. For this instance, I think it’d be more like this,” she says, mimicking the two different signs slowly from the book for Danny to copy, as is their new routine. “It’s more for the capture like contain or arrest than, say, to grab something off a shelf or to grab… an opportunity? ‘See “CHANCE”’, hmm?” She murmurs and Danny barely glimpses at the upside-down image and description before she turns the page to find the other signs, now getting sucked into the book more than the previous conversation.

With Jazz distracted, it leaves Danny to ponder the ghost lady trapped in his dad’s thermos again. Unlike Tucker, he’s fairly certain that she is a ghost, but unfortunately might not be as nice as Dr Geise. She seemed to have moments of being nice though, so maybe once the menu problem gets resolved I could let her out and talk to her and see if she’s still nice? Maybe the whole menu thing was just catching her on a bad day. I hope it is. I also will have to find out where she came from. Did she live here before? Danny makes notes on a new page in his history journal, having not dared to bring his hidden ghost-notes to school. Maybe I should try talking with Dr Geise first? But how long can she really stay in the thermos? Is it inhumane to even wait until after the menu’s changed? It was supposed to be a whole week! I can’t imagine spending a whole week in a small space like that. But if I let her out before things go back to normal then are we going to go through the whole thing again?

Jazz’s fingers snap in front of his face a few times and Danny blinks out of his musings. “Back with me, Little Brother? You were zoned out pretty good there.”

“I’m fine,” he brushes off before spying a clock. “It’s almost three?”

“Yeah, I was asking if you’re good to go. We can go together if you want.”

“Ok,” he signs before packing up his stuff.

“What’s got you zoning out so far?” She asks as they approach her car, and he waits until he can lean his cane on the car to sign with both hands over the roof.

“Many things,” he signs before listing them out, counting on his fingers. “This morning’s fight. All of Sam’s food… thing. Sam and Tucker’s meat monster. Dad’s ‘ghost’.” The lady I have abducted in my backpack, Jells tailing us to the car, he adds on silently as he tries to point the little ghost to the backseat out of his sister’s sight. The only success is that Jells goes through the door, but he can’t tell if it’s because they understood or if it was just him pushing them through it. 

“Hmm. I’m sure it’ll work out though,” she says as they open the doors and climb in. “The school menu will have to change back soon because it’s not that sustainable despite what Sam may think, especially with such a large group of people who disagree.” Jazz’s backpack goes right through Jells as she tosses it in the back without looking and it stresses him out that it’s such a close call. “I don’t know what that thing with the meat monster is really about, but maybe that flying person will show up again and Dad’ll see that it might not be a ghost.”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” he signs before they start off home. 

Chapter Text

Danny doesn’t have to wait the whole week, which is nice, but he still feels a sense of trepidation as he heads to the school alone with the thermos in his backpack a few evenings later. Danny gets to the edge of the property before hiding behind a bush to transform and flying into the building with his stuff. Over the last couple of days he’s wondered where he was going to talk to the Lunch Lady again and decided that if she was to believe him then it would have to be back in the kitchen. Let’s hope she doesn’t trash the ovens again before hearing me out. 

Danny gets to the kitchen and flips on the lights before going over to the bulletin board they first met at and making sure that the weird revisions are gone and that things are back to normal. He takes a deep breath and positions the thermos as he had before, his hand over the cap. When he takes the cap off there’s nothing there. “What the… huh? But isn’t she in here?” Danny peers into the thermos before turning it over and giving it a few shakes, but nothing happens. “I guess she’s gone?” 

An inquisitive buzz has him jumping, spinning to brandish the thermos like a weapon again only to find Jells floating there. “Oh. Sorry bud. Guess I didn’t see you there. Also, when did you get there?” The little blob ghost buzzes again and zooms to the thermos in his hand. “No wait! I don’t know if you’ll be disappeared too!” Jells turns tangible for a second as they try to knock the thermos out of Danny’s hand like a cat who wants attention. “Hey! Knock it off!” 

The thermos is bested by Jells and falls to the floor with a clatter.

Suddenly there’s a beep before a flash of white light before the Lunch Lady gets blown out of the thermos rapidly into a heap before she starts floating with a hand to her head, looking disoriented. “Oof! What happened?”

Danny picks up the thermos from the floor carefully as the lady looks around and inspects it, noticing then that there’s a switch on the side and a panel that’s now flashing the word ‘release’. “Oh, there’s a release switch? That’s nice. Thanks, Jells!” Danny says and holds out a fist like he would for Tucker to bump but the blob just sinks through his hand. “I’m not sure what I expected, but okay.” 

“You!” The Lunch Lady gets his attention with a yell, hair puffing out and seeming to get larger as she points a finger at him accusingly.

“Me!?” Danny tucks the thermos under his arm and raises his palms up in surrender. “Let’s not fight right now, okay? We’ll just take it easy,” he says, Jells sinking through his chest to hide behind him.

“You kept me from fixing the menu!”

“I did. I’m not going to apologise for that though,” Danny says outright and the lady bristles. “Like I had said though, it was a temporary change. You can see for yourself on the board behind you,” he says with a quick flick of his wrist to gesture to the wall behind her.

She turns and stares at the board and Danny watches her hair float downwards. That’s like a dog raising its hackles then, or a beta fish flailing their fins to look bigger. I wonder if Jells can do the same thing?  “Well that’s… good.”

“It’s something, for sure,” Danny nods. There could definitely be some improvements but I’m not gonna tough that. “Are you going to keep up the fight or can I set this down now?” He asks, gesturing with his chin to his dad’s invention under his arm while not taking his eyes off of her. 

“What is that?” She asks, sounding a little wary but mostly confused… which, yeah, that’s probably par for the course with dad’s stuff. “A soup thermos?”

“It was modelled after one at least. So… can I?”

“Sure,” she agrees slowly with another glance to the board. “With the menu changed back there’s not much to fight about anyway.”

“I was hoping more that we could talk it out? Both because that was an… extreme reaction and because you’re one of the few ghosts I’ve ever met.” 

“Sure, sonny.” She looks over him again with a more critical eye. “You’re too skinny,” she declares. “I’ll cook while you talk.” 

“Oh. Uh, okay?” Danny looks around the kitchen as she starts moving to the sink. “Wait, here?”

“Yes,” she says as she starts going through washing up. 

Not wanting to push her when she’s been violent over a small thing before, Danny lets it go in favour of his growing curiosity. “Do ghosts even need to eat?”

“Need? Maybe not,” she shrugs. “Most do though, especially those that are more newly dead, like you.”

“You can tell that I’m new?”

“I can’t tell how new you are, but yes, you have that freshly dead air to you. Certainly less than 100 years dead, I’d say.” She looks over and kind of squints at him again. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around though. Did you die in this area?”

“Yeah, it was, um… uh.” Danny’s fists clench a little as he thinks back to the accident before he takes a breath to remember how long it’s been. “Maybe two and a half months ago? Here in town.” 

The Lunch Lady’s eyebrows raise high on her head as her surprise is palpable in the air. “You fought well for one so fresh, my dear, though with that age it’s no wonder I do not know of you. What is your name?”

“Danny, ma’am. And yours?” 

“Most refer to me as just the lunch lady, dear, but you can call me Mrs Bea.“

“Okay, Nice to meet you, Mrs Bea!” Danny smiles and settles on a counter not too far from where she’s working, careful not to be in her way. Different ingredients float around in the air along with the utensils as she starts. Jells floats out cautiously from behind Danny and Mrs Bea looks at them curiously, so Danny introduces them. “This is Jells, named after Jell-O.“ 

“Jell-O? Like the gelatin brand?”

“Yeah! You know Jell-O?”

“Yes? The brand has been around for over 100 years,” she says with a smile as Jells starts their usual slinky game with Danny’s hands automatically moving along. “I used to use it all the time for desserts, though I tended towards more of the pudding mixed salads rather than fussing with dessert molds. My favorite to both make and eat was the one with the cookies. The shortbread cookies with the chocolate on them,” she clarifies.

”There’s one with cookies? I feel like I’ve been cheated!“ He laughs as he relaxes. “Mom just usually makes fudge when she’s feeling sweets and my aunt only makes pineapple-lime Jell-O in one of those circle pans, which yuck!” Danny makes a face, sticking out his tongue as Mrs Bea smiles at him. “I think there was some pistachio dessert salad once at some event, but there was also ice cream there, so I had that.”

”Oh dear, we better fix that!” Mrs Bea grins as more things start levitating over. “We can’t have you missing out on an important staple like dessert salad!”

Danny’s mildly alarmed that she’s going to use up everything in the kitchen and sits up to stop her somehow. ”Oh, but I couldn’t eat all that!”

“No worries,” Mrs Bea says, waving him off as a stovetop gets turned on and ice baths are made, “we can leave it for the staff to eat as a ‘thank you’ for borrowing the kitchen here once again. We won’t even be using anything that needs to be used immediately for the school here.”

“How do you know—ah wait, the menu. Well, if you’re sure…” Danny eases back into a more relaxed posture. “So, did you work here before?“ 

“Sure did! Worked with a bunch of us in a merry little crew here!” Mrs Bea says with a proud stance and a cheery tone. “That is, until Randy Olson blew us up one day experimenting with some godforsaken new recipe of his!”

“What? He blew up the kitchen?!”

“Yes, he sure did!” She laughs with a levity that Danny can’t fathom. “I don’t think he died though. I think only one other of us stuck around after the initial passing, but she moved on after her grandbaby was born.”

“Ghosts… move on?”

“Sure they can!” She says matter of factly. “The ‘unfinished business’ part of the folklore of ghosts is true, even if it doesn’t apply the same to every ghost. She wanted to see her grandbaby’s birth and then she was content enough to continue on. I like making food and feeding people, so I’ve stuck around longer for it. It’s satisfying to make things. Randy, though…” her lips flatten into a line, “that man liked to experiment too much. Playing with a recipe is all good, I do it myself, but that man,” she huffs, her hair flaring up slightly. “Food shouldn’t react like that.” 

Sensing her irritation starting to build subtly, Danny tries to talk about something else. “I don’t know many human ghosts. You’re the first I’ve met that I could talk to other than Dr Geise because the others are either animals or blobs like Jells here. Are there many ghosts that are human?” 

“Sure!” She says, brightening a little more. “There’s also other ghosts you can talk to that aren’t strictly human, but they all mostly keep to the Realms, see? We tend to not bother with the Living Realms a whole lot. I’ve not seen a little blob get attached to a human ghost like that one there seems to have, but I have seen swarms of them back home.” 

“Yeah, Dr Geise told me they don’t do a lot and that most just ignore them anyway, but Jells kept popping up around me so I named them. Can’t really understand them too much outside of the mild emotions though, but I’m trying. They seem to understand their name at least.” Danny pauses, trying to think of how he wants to phrase his question. “What do you mean by ‘back home’? I thought you were from here.”

“Oh, I am from here, sonny! I grew up over in Elmerton. ‘Home’ now would be in the Realms since I crossed over after Deedee moved on. Haven’t been back this way since, but I felt something was off and followed it. Found a nifty portal not too far from here and was drawn into the school. Before that I was in my own little Lair in the Realms.” 

“What are the Realms?”

Mrs Bea’s eyebrows raise with her smile. “Ooh, you haven’t crossed over yet?”

“Wait, didn’t you say your friend crossed over?”

“No dear, I said she moved on. Ghosts can move on while amongst people who are living here, but they can also cross over to the Realms to reside. She moved on, I crossed over. That doesn’t mean that once you’ve crossed over you can’t still move on though, but I’ve never heard of someone coming back after moving onward to where else we ghosts go after Fading. The Realms is…” Mrs Bea’s eyebrows scrunch together a little as she pauses to think. “I’m not sure how to describe it. I s’pose one could just call it the afterlife, but some of the ghosts there have never been to this realm before. Or any Living Realm at all for that matter.” 

“Never?” Danny asks. 

“Nope! They’re of the realms through and through. Once crossed over we’re of the realms too, but that’s all they’ve known, you see?”

“Woah.” Danny processes it for a moment before trying to articulate his understanding. “So there’s three levels to whole of existence and the Realms is like the middle?”

“Like the peanut butter and jelly in a sandwich. Wait. Maybe it’s more like the jell-o?” Mrs Bea thinks aloud. “But no one knows where the ghosts who’ve moved on goes for sure… and there’s the other Living Realms to consider,” she hums.

“There’s other Living Realms?”

“Yes,” she says simply, not adding anything else or even acting like she hadn’t confirmed that the multiverse exists.

“So… it’s like space?”

“Hmm?”

“Space. It connects Earth to other things in space like planets and stars and stuff. Everything is in space, but space isn’t in everything.”

“You could look at it that way. I don’t know where the moved on ghosts would come into play for that; I never really cared for that kind of science in school when I was a girl.”

“I’ll have to see what Dr Geise has to say about it. He didn’t mention whatever these Realms were, but we don’t really have a ton of time to talk anyway, so it could just be on a list of things to be taught,” he waves off. “If you were here and then there, how’d you get back here again?”

“There are natural portals everywhere, but those are unpredictable. I followed the feeling I had to one not too far from here, which was lucky, I s’pose: it could’ve been anywhere! This one apparently has opened into a lab of sorts. I couldn’t really tell what kind of lab it was since I was a little more focused on something else at the time though.” She eyes him contemplatively for a moment between switching tasks. “Maybe you would know, if you’re into science like you seem.” 

“Maybe,” Danny says lightly. He has a sinking feeling that he knows exactly where Mrs Bea entered the world from and doesn’t quite want to contemplate what that means yet. “After we’re done here maybe you can walk me there so I can see.”

“That would be wonderful, dear. I hope it’s still open; I’d hate to get stuck here until another one opens up.”

“I have a feeling it will be,” Danny smiles and tries his hand at redirecting the conversation by asking “so what’s it like in the Realms then?” 

Danny and Mrs Bea keep chatting about what she knows about the Realms, but it’s rather limited as it doesn’t fall into her interest so they skip around for the information. For the questions he gets that she doesn’t know he writes them down to try and remember to ask Dr Geise later. In between what she does know, she shows him what she’s doing with the food, tells him why she’s doing it, and asks him a little about how his school life has gone. He does have to agree that the cookie-salad dessert was excellent and carefully copies what she dictates down on another page to keep. After he does that, she has him take down a few other recipes to try and tells him that he’s welcome to find her in the Realms anytime to talk about food again.

When they are done cooking and eating, he helps her clean up, packing food away and writing an apology note for the lunch workers. A few different times he thinks he feels someone else watching them, but when he goes to look for whatever it could be he finds nothing. As they leave the school, he suggests doing so invisibly and she agrees. They fly over the buildings, keeping track of one another by talking back and forth, mainly about changes and similarities in the neighbourhood Mrs Bea notices as they go. “I lived closer to the edge of town, but I drove this way often for work. Oh, Deedee would be disappointed they changed the colour of that house on the corner from red! I thought it made it look like a barn even back then. The blue is a nice change. Might’ve done less of a bright shade myself though.” They get above his home and he stops above the OPs Center. She moves on without him through the roof before realising he hadn’t followed and returns, fading back into visibility with him as he floats above the house. “Is something the matter? I can feel it down below still, so it’s still there.” 

“That’s… that’s good I guess. I just know this house is all,” Danny says, greatly understating his familiarity. 

“You do? Then you know the lab then?”

“Yeah. They’re the local ghost hunters.”

“Ghost hunt— oh dear.” She looks down at the building with a little more concern. “Not the best place for a portal to make itself in, I should think.”

Danny lets out a strained laugh. “Nope, it doesn’t sound like it.” The portal does lead to ghosts. They haven’t gone in, right? No, I’d have noticed if they did. They’d be talking about it all the time if they had! Have they been talking about a plan to go in though? You have been a little spacey in the lab. Ha, ‘space’-y.

“Hm. People largely didn’t believe in ghosts when I was living before. Has that changed?”

“Um. I don’t think so? I think it’s still a marginalised belief rooted more in superstition and self-soothing tendencies,” Danny says, feeling like Jazz’s words are coming out of him for a second. “I know I didn’t believe in ghosts until this happened to me at least. Most people think the Drs Fenton are crackpot scientists who are ‘wasting their lives being obsessed with things that aren’t real when there’s already enough going on in the world’.” Danny remembers hearing one person say that his parents were ‘searching for nonexistent problems in a world already full of trouble’, which really sums it up well. “Ghosts existing shouldn’t have been that big of a jump, I guess. My friend Sam told me that there’s usually grains of truth in things that are similar around the world over the span of everyone’s heritage or whatever. ‘Mythos’, I think she said.” 

“Do you think they are able to hurt things they can’t even touch? I don’t think I’ve heard of much that can. Do they dabble in magic, perhaps?”

“No, they are pretty loud about not believing in magic,” Danny says firmly, remembering that the question of Santa Claus was between whether he existed as a ghost or at all, not anything about magic. “But, uh… they’re the ones who made the thermos,” Danny reveals to her. “The guy doctor Fenton was saying something about it being made to capture ghosts before he threw it,” he fudges a little, “so I tried it because I couldn’t think of anything else. Didn’t have a ton of hope of it working since their other stuff doesn’t seem to work.” He looks back at Mrs Bea, realising he had been just staring blankly at the house and sees that she looks less than impressed. “It worked though, obviously,” he says, trying to brush by their previous animosity, “so what if they have other things that work? What if they have another thermos or- or weapons or something?” He worries out loud. “They’re likely in their lab now too.”

“At this hour?” Mrs Bea questions, looking down at the lighted house again. 

“I did mention they’re borderline obsessive about their work, right?” He stresses. “They’d practically live in their lab.” 

“Hm. Well. If you don’t want to fly into their lab then I won’t force you, Danny. The wondering about what kind of lab wasn’t consuming me and it has been answered, so you shouldn’t feel any obligation to follow me into the house, okay?” She keeps her tone soft yet firm as she continues. “I will be returning to the Realms though, and since I don’t know how long this portal will hold steady I will have to depart through it fairly soon.”

“But what if they’re in there?”

“They won’t see me,” Mrs Bea tries to assure him, flashing her invisibility. “They couldn’t touch me either because I’ll just keep my intangibility up from phasing through the building itself, alright? I’ll just be going straight through the portal, dear.” 

Huh. She sounds like she’s trying to calm down a kid. I wonder why— Wait, I’m the kid. Danny closes his eyes and takes a deep breath in, holding it like Jazz would tell him to do, before slowly letting it out. “I’m sorry,” Danny says. “I didn’t mean to worry you over me.”

“Oh, little phantom, everyone worries someone else at some point or another and there’s little you can really do to stop them from doing so. I just don’t want to leave you in distress before I head back to my place.”

“I’m not in distress,” he denies. 

She smiles slightly. “Then would you become visible again?” Danny blinks and looks down at himself to find himself gone. Whoops. He pops back into the visible spectrum with blush on his face. “Now, do you know what’s got you anxious? You’ve personally fought me before and know that ghosts have skills that make them particularly well suited for sneaking around past folks.”

“I know,” Danny almost whines. “I’m just realising how bad this is and how bad it probably can get,” he says, deciding to be honest since he can actually talk out loud about his fears right now instead of trying to force them to come out correctly to himself on paper. “Like you said: ghost portal in a ghost hunter lab. What if more ghosts come out? What if the hunters are there when it happens? You were probably lucky to have missed them!” The words tumble out of him. “And what if the hunters go in? What if they do something— make something that actually works like they are meaning against ghosts? They did it with the thermos already, so they could probably do it again! And what if they don’t and a ghost who’s not nice like you turned out to be coming through? Who’s going to save them? What if—”

“-tom. Danny, please slow down,” Mrs Bea’s voice cuts through the fog clouding his head and Danny takes another breath like he did earlier and focuses on her. “You with me again?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Now, to start I’m not gonna tell you can’t worry about it because that doesn’t work. Portals also tend to be temporary, so it’s likely gonna pass and won’t be back there again; lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice, right?”

Danny flinches. “Not really a fan of lightning,” he mutters, left hand curling into a fist automatically. I don’t think the portal is going to go away though. It hasn't happened so far and it’s been months. Maybe I do have to do something. Maybe turn it off somehow?

“Oh dear,” she frowns. “I seem to be stepping right into it, huh?” 

“You couldn’t have known.” No, that wouldn’t stop my parents from trying to reopen it and who knows if that wouldn’t just make it worse. How many times can you rip into another dimension before you can’t maintain it? Until it’s unstable?

“No, but I’m still sorry. It’s different if you’re not the one bringing it up.” 

“Yeah, it is,” Danny says, thinking of the few times he’s made jokes about it with his friends and sister. His use of the word ‘shocking’ has probably skyrocketed since the accident, much to his sister’s displeasure. Surprisingly enough, the thought of his sister’s annoyed face succeeds in pushing most of the lingering anxiety from his little spiralling moment away, clearing his head enough to think and plant a little seed of resolution. “Sorry,” he says again. “I know you could probably get through fine; as you said, I’ve fought you and ghosts are perfect for sneaking. I just worry.”

“Worries are fine, sonny, they keep you cautious. It’s when it gets overwhelming about things that haven’t and may never happen that it gets troublesome,” Mrs Bea says. “Now, are you sure you aren’t going to come into the Realms?”

“I can’t; I have to stay here.”

Mrs Bea looks at him for a long moment before sighing and giving him a nod. “Alright. Will you be fine out here when I go?”

“I will be. Jells’ll keep me company,” Danny says, his use of the name calling back the little blob as they had started wandering off towards the house. The blob crashes through his hands again and Mrs Bea reaches out to tough them like one would scratch a cat’s forehead. 

“They do seem mighty comfortable with you. It was nice meeting you, Little Phantom.” She says and floats back to the roof area. 

“Same, Mrs Bea. Take care!” Danny calls after her, and with a final wave the Lunch Lady turns invisible and leaves. After a few minutes to be sure she’s gone he turns invisible again and flies into his room to turn back. 

As he plays the tossing game with Jells before bed, Danny thinks of the portal and Mrs Bea’s idea that it was temporary only. Obviously it isn’t, and her saying so only brings up more questions about portals into these Realms, but that means that more ghosts like her may come through it, right into the lab and the middle of Amity Park. Though Mrs Bea was nicer in the end, her singleminded destruction could be an issue that other ghosts hold. With their parents being this zealous with the portal open, Danny can’t even imagine the chaos that’ll happen when they do get definitive proof of ghosts out in the world. Them getting proof is inevitable with the portal open, but with minor distractions and deflections he could probably delay it. Just closing the portal while they remain so obsessed would likely only feed into it and possibly cause a bigger disruption.

In the end, Danny can only see one solution: if I can’t close the portal because of my parents, then I’m going to have to try and keep things separate the best I can.